Charles C.

Energy special: Get ready for the ‘fire ice’ revolution

The next great fossil fuel rush could make life very difficult for oil sheikhs – and for greens

On Saturday, 8 June, the research vessel Kaiyo Maru No. 7 left the port of Joetsu, in western Japan, to begin a three-year survey of the Sea of Japan — the latest step in a little-known research programme that in a decade or less could profoundly change the international balance of power.

Kaiyo Maru, a 499-ton trawler, is hunting for beds of methane hydrate, a cold, white, sherbet-like substance found off coastlines in Japan and much of the rest of the world. The United States Geological Survey estimates that as much as 2.8 trillion cubic metres of this mixture of frozen water and natural gas may exist. Although only part of this vast deposit is accessible, methane hydrate — ‘ice that burns’ — may be the Earth’s single biggest fossil-fuel source. (Natural gas consists primarily of the colourless, odourless gas methane — the two terms are almost interchangeable.)

Canada, China, Germany, India, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan and the United States have also been investigating this combustible slush. But Japan’s $700 million programme, which began in 1996, is the most advanced and extensive. In March, Tokyo completed its first production test, in another deposit 80 kilometres off the coast of eastern Japan. Jubilant, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced plans to commercialise ‘ice that burns’ by fiscal 2018.

The announcement roiled the energy industry, which was already shaken by the discovery of huge amounts of ‘unconventional’ petroleum — oil and gas from non-traditional sources, such as shale oil, tar sands and, especially, ‘fracked’ natural gas — in North America. US petroleum output has risen so much that the International Energy Agency predicted in November that the nation could surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2017.

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