http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-1 ... nergy.html
Japan and India, Asia’s biggest energy consumers after China, are closer to unlocking natural gas deposits trapped in ice below the seabed that may prove bigger than the world’s known fossil-fuel reserves.
Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp. said yesterday it produced gas in the world’s first offshore test to extract the fuel from the frozen depths. A team including Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), India’s biggest energy explorer, will drill off the east coast this year and try to produce the fuel, according to two officials at the regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. They asked to not be named before the official announcement.The nations are trying to catch up with North America, where discoveries of gas in shale rock and tar sands herald an energy revolution carrying the U.S. and Canada toward energy independence. While shale is found in only certain parts of the globe, carbon frozen with water -- called methane hydrates or burnable ice -- is found under most sea beds. The catch: There’s no technology yet to commercially extract that gas.“Methane hydrates are everywhere, including in some of the fastest-growing economies,” said Will Pearson, director for global energy & natural resources at Eurasia Group in London. “If the technology is developed, it’ll alter the gas market. What is already the golden age of gas will last much longer.”Natural gas, the fuel burned to make heat and electricity, is predominantly methane. A methane hydrate is a crystal of methane molecules surrounded by a cage of water molecules, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.Methane hydrates, stable under low temperatures and high pressure, can disintegrate when removed from those conditions.
Double Size
Initial estimates suggest carbon deposits in hydrates are double the size of all known oil, gas and coal reserves, the U.S. Geological Survey said in a January 2013 report. The world’s proven reserves of natural gas alone were 208.4 trillion cubic meters at the end of 2011, according to BP Plc. (BP/)
Gas molecules locked in ice have also been found in the North American permafrost and the Gulf of Mexico.
India is drilling for frozen gas it has preliminarily estimated to be as large as 1,894 trillion cubic meters, according to the website of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, the oil and gas exploration and production regulator. Japan’s deposits of frozen gas may be large enough to supply its needs for about 100 years, according to Japan Oil, Gas & Minerals, a government-affiliate known as JOGMEC.
‘More Independence’
“Methane hydrate could give Japan its own energy source and more independence,” said Tomoo Suzuki, professor emeritus at Tokyo Institute of Technology, who leads a study on methane hydrate deposits off the coast of Kochi prefecture. “The question is whether extracting gas from methane hydrate can be economically viable.”India, which discovered methane hydrates in the Bay of Bengal off its east coast, will later this year drill a few wells and engage in some test production to determine the size of the resource, a person familiar with the program said. Scientists have also found traces of conventional gas under the layer of hydrates on the ocean floor, the person said.Oil & Natural Gas Chairman Sudhir Vasudeva didn’t answer calls to his telephone seeking comment on the company’s plan to extract methane from hydrates.
Test Phase
In Japan’s test phase, gas was produced in the Nankai Trough about 50 kilometers (31 miles) off the coast of the country’s main Honshu island, JOGMEC said.
The Eastern Nankai Trough deposits may hold the equivalent of about 40 trillion cubic feet of methane, a primary element of natural gas, according to the statement. That’s equivalent to about 11 years of Japan’s LNG imports, it said.The country is trying to to enable commercial use by fiscal 2018, according to JOGMEC. Japan used a depressurization method in its latest test, a technology that was used when Japan and Canada jointly conducted a test production in the permafrost of northern Canada in 2008. That was the world’s first continuous and stable production from frozen gas sediments, according to the company.
Production Cost
The success of the offshore test doesn’t guarantee commercialization because of the short time span of production, said Yuji Morita, a senior researcher at Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics. The production cost won’t be an issue in the run-up to the commercialization of the fuel, Morita said.
“Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood,” the U.S. Geological Survey said in its January report. “Extraction of methane from hydrates could provide an enormous energy and petroleum feedstock resource.”
Explorers must find a way to avoid releasing large quantities of methane from hydrates into the air and the ocean. Methane traps heat so effectively it is about 10 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, according to the agency. Ice melts can reduce the pressure on the hydrates, resulting in the gas leaking out.Nations around the world are seeking new energy sources as demand increases. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is looking for technology to produce from the world’s biggest estimated shale gas deposit and enhance output from coal seams.
While India imports more than 75 percent of its crude oil and a quarter of its natural gas requirements, Japan buys all its oil and gas from overseas and is seeking to find ways to cut its dependence on Middle Eastern crude oil.“Countries that highlight the opportunity are those with limited oil and gas production,” said Nathan Piper, an Edinburgh-based analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “Gas hydrates remain challenging due in part to the offshore location.”
J. C-a love you-a all-a. You-a go to heaven-a if you-a love J.C.-a" etc. 
in entering India, had first mover's advantage and therefore even today have the largest market share in our domestic car market. What I find very interesting about the Suzuki model, is that they have now also made India a manufacturing hub for export of cars to the Middle East, North Africa and even East Europe," said Khurshid."We are delighted that other famous Japanese auto firms such as Nissan and Toyota have followed suit. The ancillary firms have begun to come to India more recently and this relatively recent development makes us sure that we are on the right track for enhancing foreign investment flows," he added.Asserting that India continues to be the largest recipient nation of Japanese Official Development Assistance for many years in a row, Khurshid said : " The Government and people of India greatly appreciate this help from the people of Japan. This aid has been utilized in large, iconic infrastructure development projects such as the Delhi Metro project, which has revolutionized travel within the city for millions of commuters. Seeing this successful example, other cities of India are also vying to build underground metro projects, some of them with Japanese assistance.""Similarly, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor project will help accelerate the speed with which goods are transported between Delhi and Mumbai and will benefit the Indian economy greatly. The Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor is another Japanese funded project in India which has enormous significance since it will establish new towns and cities which will become manufacturing hubs and will combine modern technologies to make them smart cities. Many of these ventures are futuristic in their orientation and will positively impact modernization and development in India," he added.