Japan may have found a solution to its energy woes, in the form of methane hydrates.
The island nation imports almost all of its natural gas and oil, and after the Fukushima disaster, the country has shut down most of its nuclear reactors.
But Japanese scientists announced a breakthrough on Tuesday. A crew on the Chikyu, a drilling ship stationed in the Sea of Japan, successfully mined methane hydrates. The team extracted gas from a layer of methane hydrates deep (1,000 feet) beneath the seabed. According to The New York Times, this is the first time methane hydrates have been extracted from below a seabed. Previously, they have been taken from on-shore methane hydrate reservoirs, but never from beneath the sea. Much of the world’s deposits of methane hydrate are below the ocean floor, so Japan may have just tapped into a huge energy source.
Of course, the country is still far from commercially drilling for methane hydrates.
“Japan could finally have an energy source to call its own,” Toshimitsu Motegi, spokesman for the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, told The New York Times. Jogmec is the state-run company in charge of the extraction. The company estimates that the surrounding area in the Nankai Trough has at least 39 trillion cubic feet of methane hydrates, which translates to as much energy as 11 years' worth of Japanese gas imports.
“This is the world’s first trial production of gas from oceanic methane hydrates, and I hope we will be able to confirm stable gas production,” said Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s trade minister. Motegi understands that they’re still years away from commercial drilling, but remains optimistic, and points to former energy challenges: “Shale gas was considered technologically difficult to extract but is now produced on a large scale. By tackling these challenges one by one, we could soon start tapping the resources that surround Japan.”
