China has released footage of its successful mining of flammable ice in the South China Sea. China has begun extracting flammable ice from the bottom of the sea. What is “flammable ice”

China has become the first country in the world to begin offshore production of natural gas hydrate, which is seen as a new energy source and will eventually be able to become a worthy competitor to oil and natural gas.

Despite the fact that the cost of producing new fuel is still quite high, there is no doubt that we are witnessing another round of energy diversification, which, like shale oil and gas, will soon make itself felt.

What is gas hydrate?

This is a crystalline compound that is formed from water and gas at the required temperature and pressure. It looks like regular ice. To the touch – smooth and cold. Has no smell. Burns with a yellowish-blue flame.

One cubic meter of gas hydrate contains much more energy than a cubic meter of natural gas. One cubic meter of “combustible ice” is equal to 164 cubic meters of natural gas in the gaseous state.

A car can travel about 500 kilometers on 1 liter of gas hydrate, while a car can travel only 3 kilometers on 1 liter of natural gas.

Inexhaustible energy storage

The results of geological studies indicate that the world's reserves of gas hydrates range from 12 to 20 thousand gigatons. Predicted hydrocarbon reserves may increase in the future, since not all areas potentially rich in “combustible ice” have been explored.

Large reserves of natural gas hydrate occur at sea depths ranging from 500 to 2,500 meters. A lot of “flammable ice” is also found in the Arctic depths.

According to geologists, gas hydrate reserves exceed in volume all known energy sources on the planet. There is still no complete picture of how much natural gas hydrate is contained in the bowels of the earth, but even based on conservative estimates, we can confidently say that this is the largest energy reserve currently available to humanity.

The energy potential of methane hydrate is greater than that of oil, coal, shale and peat combined. If acceptable technologies for inexpensive and environmentally friendly production are found, this fuel should last for many centuries.

According to geologists, in the Arctic latitudes of Siberia and North America, in hydrate deposits, the gas concentration ranges from 60 to 80%, which is much higher than in offshore fields, where gas filling, as a rule, does not exceed 20%. At the same time, marine deposits are much larger than Arctic continental deposits.

Gas hydrate deposits have already been discovered off the coast of the USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, India, China, in the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and South China seas. There are also reserves of methane hydrate in the shelf zone near Ukraine.

Geologists suggest that natural gas hydrate deposits are located over much larger areas than those already known.

The question remains unresolved: how to reduce the cost of production, and how to use these resources without disturbing the ecological balance in the environment?

The race for “flammable ice” has begun

Many developed countries are already seriously considering natural gas hydrate as a very promising area for energy in the near future.

The first industrial production of methane from hydrates was established in Siberia. At the Messoyakovsky gas field in Russia, natural gas has been produced from methane hydrate for many years. A gas pipeline has been laid from the field to Norilsk.

Despite the leadership in the production of hydrocarbons from shale rocks, the United States is seriously interested in the production of gas hydrates. Congress allocated the first $50 million to develop a program to include new fuels in the country's energy mix. According to American experts, the country's energy demand will increase by 30% in the next five years, so any new options for obtaining fuel will be very useful.

The Japanese are actively developing a new type of fuel. Japan does not have oil and gas, the entire volume has to be imported, but this country has large reserves of methane, which is located on the seabed. The Japanese set themselves the goal of reaching the level of commercial, industrial production of gas hydrate, obtaining a new, almost inexhaustible source of energy. In order to achieve the desired result as quickly as possible, Japan is simultaneously developing production technologies both from the seabed and in the Arctic latitudes.

Test drilling in the Canadian Arctic showed that the extracted ice was 80% filled with gas. Full-scale development of the field, which is located 70 kilometers from the Japanese coast, is planned to begin in 2018.

According to JOGMEC, with the existing methane hydrate reserves on the country's shelf, Japan can cover its natural gas needs for 100 years into the future.

The Chinese also announced their success in entering the industrial production of hydrates. China was the first to manage to lift “flammable ice” from the seabed. The field is located at the bottom of the South China Sea, 285 kilometers from Hong Kong. Since May of this year, 16 thousand cubic meters of natural gas from hydrates have been extracted from the field every day.

Canada, which has large reserves of energy resources, is also working on developing industrial technology for the extraction of methane hydrate, both independently and jointly with the Japanese.

New technologies are needed to extract “combustible ice”

Not a single country in the world has yet been able to achieve a well-functioning industrial technology for the production of new fuel. The difficulty in extracting gas hydrate is that, according to researchers, there are huge gas bubbles under the layer of methane ice.

Depressurization of such a bubble and the release of a large volume of methane into the atmosphere can lead to a large-scale environmental disaster. Therefore, a search is underway for a technology that will make it possible to produce gas without allowing it to leak into the atmosphere.

It is only a matter of time before technologies reach a commercial level. At first, oil and gas from shale rocks also could not compete with traditional production due to their high cost.

But in two decades, Americans have advanced so much that the cost of shale production has dropped to traditional levels. This has made it possible for shale hydrocarbons to become a successful competitor in the global energy market.

The appearance of gas hydrate indicates one important trend - gas is becoming the most important energy resource. First of all, because there is a lot of it. Methane hydrate reserves exceed the existing volumes of traditional and shale gas by 50 times; this is enough for more than one century of active exploitation.

In the future, methane gas will replace traditional petroleum products, and now the time has come to create new engines and equipment that will run on methane. The successes of Japanese and Chinese geologists may signal the imminent advent of a new energy era.

Sergey Savenko

China has announced an energy breakthrough. Experts have extracted “flammable ice” from the bottom of the South Korean Sea. We are talking about combining water and natural gas. Soviet scientists discovered it more than half a century ago. Meanwhile, the Celestial Empire claims that in the future the whole world will switch to the extraction of this substance, and their breakthrough means more than the “shale revolution.” Will a new type of fuel be able to eclipse oil and gas?

These are the first images of what China has called a historic breakthrough. The PRC has been working towards this for 20 years. Alloy of water and methane. Fuel of the future. That's what they call it in the world. There is more of it than all the oil, gas and coal on the planet. Enough for centuries.

“This will be led by China, following the US breakthrough in shale gas production. It will affect the development of the entire world energy sector. There are hundreds of such gas hydrate deposits around the world. From the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea and Lake Baikal,” said Li Jinfa, Deputy Director of the Chinese Geological Survey.

Gas hydrates are usually hidden under the seabed offshore and under permafrost. That is, their formation requires two factors - cold and high pressure.

Combustible ice is the same natural gas, only in a different form. Due to low temperatures and high pressure, it crystallizes and looks more like loose snow or ice. When melting, water and methane are released. One cubic meter of such ice contains 164 cubic meters of natural gas.

Scientists from the USSR were the first to suggest that such fuel exists in nature and discovered the first deposit back in the 60s. Research was carried out at the Gubkin Institute. Since then, many countries have experimented. But because of the high price and unprofitability, the matter rarely came to production. Japan has succeeded the most.

But China assures that it was the first to extract flammable ice in such volumes from the seabed. And that the operation took place on his equipment. The technologies are also all native. But is it true that the ice has broken?

“There is nothing so fantastic here. It’s just that technically, this is, one might say, an experimental technology. In fact, this is not a new fuel, it’s ordinary natural gas, methane, which we extract in classical deposits. And since they do not have their own classical deposits , they are starting to invent some new methods of extraction. So here everyone is trying to try their own technology so that they also have a gas deposit,” explained Igor Yushkov, a leading analyst at the National Energy Security Fund.

Of course, there is no talk of any production on an industrial scale yet. China sets itself this goal by 2030. But some Chinese experts suggest not expecting anything before 2050.

How beneficial all this is at all is still a question. The Japanese have calculated that a thousand cubic meters of gas from combustible ice will cost from 400 to 1300 dollars. 2-3 times higher than natural.

“The most important thing is that they do not publish data, but how much did it cost to get this methane? That is, here you can fly to the Moon for fuel, another question is how much money you will spend for this. And the real question is whether commercial technology will be developed or not,” — noted Igor Yushkov.

It is also not yet clear how much gas can be extracted from proven or suspected reserves. Almost 200 years passed between the first commercial well in shale formations in the United States and its commercial production.

Shale oil production. Beijing claims to be the first in the world to extract so-called “combustible ice” from the bottom of the sea, a new alternative fuel that is more abundant in the world than oil, gas and coal combined. Is everything really as the Chinese claim?

Chinese oil workers were the first in the world to extract “combustible ice” - natural gas hydrate - from the bottom of the South China Sea, China Central Television reported, citing the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China.

Samples of “combustible ice” were recovered from a depth of more than 1.2 kilometers; the 200-meter underwater well itself was located 285 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong. In just eight days of work, 120 cubic meters of “combustible ice”, which contains 99.5% methane, was produced. One cubic meter of gas hydrate usually produces 164 cubic meters of natural gas.

“This will be the same major event as the shale revolution that occurred earlier in the United States. As a result, the way energy is used in the future will undergo a transformation,” said Li Jinfa, deputy director of the ministry's geological research department.

According to him, China has achieved “unprecedented success” in developing the theoretical basis and technologies in this direction, as a result of which the country has taken a leading position in the world in the production of “combustible ice.”

This success was officially confirmed on the website of the People's Government of the People's Republic of China: after 20 years of continuous research, geological exploration, development of relevant technologies, and the creation of special equipment, China was finally able to achieve this “historic breakthrough.”

“Natural gas hydrate is the richest and most efficient alternative energy source, and in the future it can play a strategic role in the development of energy throughout the world,” the statement also said.

It must be said that methane hydrate is the most common gas hydrate in nature. Essentially, it is a crystalline compound of gas and water, similar to loose ice or compressed snow. It burns no worse than coal. The volume of natural gas hydrate reserves in the planet's oceans is approximately twice the sum of the world's known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. Features such as the huge reserves and relative purity of this type of energy carrier promise the possibility of natural gas hydrate replacing the use of coal and oil in the future.

It is interesting that the theory about the possibility of the existence of such a compound in nature was first put forward by a Russian scientist from the Gubkin Institute in 1965, Yuri Makagon. And soon his assumption was confirmed - the Messoyakha gas hydrate field was discovered in the Arctic. Since then, hundreds of deposits of such gas have been discovered around the world.

However, Russian industry experts are very cautious about the gas revolution announced by China.

Firstly, the Chinese say that they are the first. “Actually, this is not true. The first experiments in gas hydrate production were carried out in Japan ten years ago. The best Japanese minds have continued to struggle with the problem all these years, but the matter has not been brought to industrial production. Although last year they promised that they would begin operational tests in 2017,” says Ivan Kapitonov, associate professor at the RANEPA Higher School, senior researcher at the energy policy sector of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Indeed, as a result of Japanese research near the Pacific coast in 1995-2000. they managed to get some methane hydrate from the bottom. This inspired the country's authorities. In 2013, the Japanese company Jogmec reported “impressive” results from an experiment in the extraction of gas hydrates. However, production has not actually begun. Although for Japan, which does not have its own energy resources, this would be manna from heaven. Especially considering that geologists talk about 7 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrate on the seabed around the Japanese islands, which would be enough for the country to last 100 years.

The second important question concerns the cost of industrial production of such gas. “What are the prospects for the commercial implementation of the technology is still completely unclear. It is very likely that the cost of producing gas hydrates is an order of magnitude higher than the cost of producing traditional gas,” notes Agibalov.

“According to last year’s calculations by the Japanese, the cost of a thousand cubic meters of gas extracted from hot ice was in the range of $400-1,300 per thousand cubic meters,” says Kapitonov. This is much more expensive than the cost of LNG, and especially pipeline gas. If, of course, the Chinese really made some kind of technological breakthrough, then the price could drop, the expert does not rule out. However, the Chinese would hardly remain silent about such a breakthrough. There are still few specifics from China.

“Despite the potential technological breakthrough, I assume that we can only talk about actual industrial production in a few years. I think it will take three years to develop new technologies, and then estimate the cost of gas production using it,” says Kapitonov.

But what if we assume that the Chinese are not exaggerating? At one time, few people believed in the success of shale oil, but now the cost of its production is below $50.

The good news is that at least the Russian project to build the Power of Siberia gas pipeline has nothing to worry about. “For the Power of Siberia, all volumes have been contracted, so here Russia is in any case on the safe side of the street,” Kapitonov is sure. In addition, gas hydrate will initially compete directly in price with LNG, and not with pipeline gas. Therefore, China is unlikely to covet Gazprom’s position in Europe.

“In the long term, the emergence of new sources of raw materials will, of course, threaten all others. But now, significantly more uncertainty in the energy markets is brought not by the question of the future supply of energy resources, but by the future demand, which is actively modified by the environmental agenda,” Sergei Agibalov rightly notes.

Deputy Director General of the National Energy Security Fund Alexey Grivach is much more skeptical: “These statements by China do not mean anything. The question is, how many decades will it take them to get economically viable methane from this resource for industrial use on an industrial scale? After all, methane does not just need to be extracted. Today, no country has any serious success; no one has brought anything to the level of industrial technology.”

He does not exclude that Chinese companies may exaggerate their achievements, for example, in order to continue to receive funding from the state, or use this as an argument in negotiations with fuel suppliers. “But it is clear to specialists that industrial success is still very far away,” says Grivach.

“This is a really great resource. But there are still quite a lot of traditional ones available; according to some estimates, they will last for another 60 years, according to others - for 100 years. And it is easier to produce natural gas, even in Arctic conditions, than gas hydrate,” concludes Grivach.

The main technological difficulty in extracting hydrate is how to raise the “flammable ice” from the bottom of the sea so that it does not heat up and the pressure does not change. Otherwise, methane hydrate breaks down into water and natural gas. Many countries have made attempts to find the key to developing such deposits. And the USA, by the way, has been especially active; they even have a national program on this topic. But the shale revolution happened, but the gas hydrate revolution did not. Japan and China, apparently, are seriously ahead of the United States in this matter.

Finally, another serious drawback of this type of resource is the risk of causing enormous damage to nature. The seabed can become unstable due to hydrate mining, and its leak due to a technological error or simply a natural shock can lead to the formation of a huge gas bubble hundreds of times larger than the size of the original volume of hydrate, according to an article in the journal Atomic Expert.

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. Russian mathematicians created a model for developing deposits of the richest source of natural gas on the planet - gas hydrates, the concentration of which is high in the Arctic zone, and Skoltech scientists proposed a technology for extracting methane from hydrates. Experts told TASS how the production of such methane will help reduce the greenhouse effect, what are the advantages of new research, and whether there are prospects for the industrial development of gas hydrates in Russia.

Against the greenhouse effect

Gas hydrates are solid crystalline compounds of ice and gas; they are also called “flammable ice.” In nature, they are found in the thickness of the ocean floor and in permafrost rocks, so extracting them is very difficult - wells must be drilled to a depth of several hundred meters, and then natural gas can be separated from the ice deposits and transported to the surface. Chinese oil workers managed to do this in the South China Sea in 2017, but to do this they had to go deeper into the seabed by more than 200 meters, despite the fact that the depth in the production area exceeded 1.2 km.

Researchers consider gas hydrates a promising source of energy, which can be in demand, in particular, by countries with limited other energy resources, for example, Japan and South Korea. Estimates of the content of methane, the combustion of which provides energy, in gas hydrates around the world vary: from 2.8 quadrillion tons according to the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation to 5 quadrillion tons according to the World Energy Agency (IEA). Even minimal estimates reflect huge reserves: for comparison, BP Corporation (British Petroleum) estimated global oil reserves at 240 billion tons in 2015.

“According to estimates of some organizations, primarily Gazprom VNIIGAZ, methane resources in gas hydrates on the territory of the Russian Federation range from 100 to 1000 trillion cubic meters, in the Arctic zone, including the seas, up to 600-700 trillion cubic meters, but this is very approximate,” - Evgeniy Chuvilin, leading researcher at the Center for Hydrocarbon Production at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), told TASS.

In addition to the actual source of energy, gas hydrates can become a salvation from greenhouse gases, which will help stop global warming. The voids emptied of methane can be filled with carbon dioxide.

"According to researchers, methane hydrates contain more than 50% of the carbon of the total known world hydrocarbon reserves. This is not only the richest source of hydrocarbon gas on our planet, but also a possible reservoir for carbon dioxide, which is considered a greenhouse gas. You can kill two birds with one stone - extract methane, burn it to produce energy and pump in its place carbon dioxide obtained during combustion, which will take the place of methane in the hydrate,” Nail Musakaev, deputy director for scientific work of the Tyumen branch of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS.

In permafrost conditions

Today, researchers identify three main promising methods for extracting gas hydrates.

“Before extracting gas from hydrates, it is necessary to decompose them into components - gas and water or gas and ice. The main methods of gas production can be distinguished - reducing pressure at the bottom of the well, heating the formation with hot water or steam, supplying inhibitors (substances) to the formation for the decomposition of gas hydrates - TASS note),” Musakaev explained.

Scientists from Tyumen and Sterlitamak have created a mathematical model for methane production in permafrost. It is noteworthy in that it takes into account the process of ice formation during field development.

“The formation of ice has pros and cons: it can clog equipment, but, on the other hand, the decomposition of gas hydrate into gas and ice requires three times less energy than when decomposing into gas and water,” Musakaev said.

The advantage of mathematical modeling is the ability to predict the development scenario for gas hydrate deposits, including assessing the economic efficiency of gas production methods from such deposits. The results may be of interest to design organizations involved in planning and exploration of gas hydrate fields, the scientist noted.

Skoltech is also developing technologies for extracting methane from hydrates. Together with colleagues from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Skoltech specialists proposed extracting methane from gas hydrates by pumping air into the rock layer. “This method is more economical than existing ones and has less impact on the environment,” Chuvilin explained.

This method assumes that carbon dioxide or nitrogen is injected into the formation, and gas hydrates are decomposed into components due to the difference in pressure. “We are still conducting methodological research to test the method and its effectiveness. The creation of the technology is still far away, while we are creating the physical and chemical foundations of this technology,” the scientist emphasized.

According to Chuvilin, Russia does not yet have fully ready-made technologies for the effective extraction of methane from hydrates, since there are no targeted programs to support this scientific area. But development is still underway. “Gas hydrates may not become the main energy resource of the future, but their use will certainly require the development of new knowledge,” Musakaev added.

Economic expediency

The forecast for the development of the Russian fuel and energy complex for the period up to 2035 takes into account the exploration and development of gas hydrate fields among the long-term prospects for gas production. The document notes that gas hydrates can become “a factor in global energy only in 30-40 years,” but a breakthrough scenario is not ruled out. In any case, the development of hydrates will entail a global redistribution in the world market of fuel resources - gas prices will decline, and mining corporations will be able to maintain their income only by capturing new markets and increasing sales volumes. For the massive development of such deposits, it is necessary to create new technologies, improve and reduce the cost of existing ones, the strategy notes.

Considering the inaccessibility of hydrates and the complexity of their extraction, experts call them a promising source of energy, but note that this is not a trend in the coming years - hydrates require new technologies that are still being developed. And in conditions of established natural gas production, methane from hydrates is not in the most advantageous position. In the future, everything will depend on the energy market conditions.

Deputy Director of the Skoltech Hydrocarbon Production Center Alexey Cheremisin believes that methane from hydrates will not be produced soon, precisely because of the existing reserves of traditional gas.

“The timing of industrial production depends both on the economically available technology for searching, localizing and producing gas, and on market factors. Gas producing companies have sufficient reserves of traditional gas, so they consider gas production technologies from gas hydrates as a basis for the long term. In my opinion, industrial production in the Russian Federation will begin no earlier than in 10 years,” the expert said.

According to Chuvilin, there are fields in Russia where methane from gas hydrates can begin to be produced in the next 10 years, and this will be quite promising. “In some gas fields in the north of Western Siberia, when traditional gas reservoirs are depleted, it is possible to develop overlying horizons where gas can be in hydrated form. This is possible in the next decade, everything will depend on the cost of energy resources,” the agency’s interlocutor concluded.

The “combustible ice” produced by China for the first time will not withstand competition with Russian natural gas in the next decade. For the energy revolution, it is necessary to first develop the technology and significantly reduce the cost of its production, says a teacher at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Igor Yushkov.

Chinese "flammable ice"

Chinese oil workers were the first in the world to extract natural gas hydrate from the bottom of the South China Sea. The Chinese themselves immediately called their success colossal. In their opinion, “combustible ice” is capable of making a revolution in the energy sector, comparable to the shale revolution. In total, they extracted about 120 cubic meters of energy, the methane content in it is 99.5%.

“We are talking about gas hydrates, and the Chinese are not pioneers here. Various countries have been engaged in development almost since the middle of the 20th century, and the Japanese are closer to the breakthrough. Last year they already announced that they had tested industrial gas production from gas hydrate. In principle, gas hydrate can be produced anywhere. Methane is found in a small layer of silty sediment, and if you come to a swamp or flooded area near a pond, you can extract methane yourself using an ordinary ballpoint pen.

It is known that the largest reserves of gas hydrate are located on Lake Baikal. But at the moment there is no commercially viable gas hydrate extraction technology, although many countries are working on it. The cost of producing “combustible ice” will be significantly higher than purchasing gas from other suppliers from traditional fields. But if production technology suddenly became available, then everyone would start extracting gas from gas hydrates, and then a global energy revolution would begin,” comments FBA "Economy Today" expert.

Cost of production of "combustible gas"

Researcher at the Center for Industrial Economics, Financial Research Institute Andrey Gordeev in turn, he notes that it is not yet possible to compare the success of China with the shale revolution, since it has been preparing for a very long time.

“We will see developments and implementations first, but they require serious investments. Most likely, Chinese gas hydrate production technology will not become widespread in the coming years. In addition, the era of hydrocarbons will persist, even despite the development of alternative energy and electric vehicles.

The main stumbling block in this case is the lack of infrastructure, since its implementation remains a capital-intensive task. Of course, the discovery of China is innovative to some extent, but it will not be the end of the era of hydrocarbons, since oil will retain its position in the energy market in the next decade,” the interlocutor explains to us.

In 2013, for the first time, the Japanese announced the extraction of methane from “combustible ice”; however, they did not lift samples of hydrate from the bottom of the sea; natural gas, after pumping out the water, went up through a pipeline.

“The Chinese freeze silt deposits and then extract gas from it, that is, in fact, they use a different extraction method. The whole question is the cost of such production. If our cost of production per well averages 10-15 dollars, and in large fields in Yamal it tends to zero, then in the case of “flammable ice” it will be extremely high.

The same shale production technology was tested for about 30 years until it gave acceptable results, while gas was more expensive on the market at that time. Now the price of gas varies from 200 to 300 dollars per 1000 cubic meters, and it is extremely difficult to develop alternative sources at such a price, they simply cannot withstand competition,” sums up Yushkov.

 

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