Marine Energy Solutions!?

"The idea is to disrupt the deposits by warming them slightly or by lowering the pressure a little. Then the methane will turn back into gas and we can collect it." Prof. Bahman Tohidi, director of the Centre for Gas Hydrate Research at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Dilemma solved! If. Only. But then, why not?

The world's energy reserves suddenly doubled! Now wouldn't that be something. And not only because it takes a power source - in every sense of that phrase - out of the grasping, greedy hands of the world's most egregious tyrants, but because, possibly, the existential dilemma of environmental spoliation may be apprehended in the process of methane gas recovery and distribution.

For scientists have now confirmed that vast amounts of natural gas, frozen into the seabed is a fact, and will result in more energy being available than all of the world's currently-known coal, oil and gas reserves combined. Sounds too good to be true. For isn't this just what was hoped for?

The high pressure and low temperatures present in the deep of the world's oceans has created a frozen bed of methane gas mixed with water.

Methane hydrate results when marine sediments undergo chemical reactions, alternately by microbes breaking down organic matter, creating the gas. The gas is then released to make its way upward to the seabed, where cooler temperatures prevail.

The cold temperature creates weak chemical bonds with the methane molecules, bonding with water molecules to produce solid methane hydrate. The process can succeed only in watery depths in excess of 600 metres.

A new study by Statoil, the state oil company of Norway, a global gas producer, suggests reclassifying methane hydrate from a nuisance marine drilling rig blocking agent, to a potentially significant fuel resource. Enough to energize the Globe for possibly centuries.

"The energy content of methane occurring in hydrate form is immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels", explained Statoil's exploration manager in unconventional hydrocarbons, Espen Andersen, preparatory to presenting his study at an energy conference.

Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation had earlier been drilling test wells into methane hydrate reserves off Japan's south-west coast. Jogmec has predicted that it will be extracting the first gas this year, feeling that there could be enough methane hydrate present in the trough to supply Japan's energy needs for 300 years.

Immense reserves of methane hydrate are believed to be present off China, South Korea and India, all countries in growth mode and heavily reliant on fuel imports. The spin-off of these new discoveries and the resultant technology that will be impressed to bring the gas to market will effectively undercut the gas and oil exports from the Gulf States, Venezuela and Iran.

The countries of the Middle East will have to begin the process of finding other sources of national income. They will diversify, and begin to process and refine their own fossil fuel extractions for their own internal use. Nullifying their extreme wealth prospects for the future, cutting off funding for the support and exportation of fundamentalist Islamism.

And the world will be a safer, more balanced place as the previously oil-rich states learn to live within their means and, we can only hope, re-absorbing the jihad-trained hordes that the West rejects, allowing the dream of universal Sharia and the return of the Caliphate to die a deserved death.

Dream on.