Originally published December 7 2005
Canadian research team drills for gas hydrate deposits
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Michael Riedel, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada, recently led a team on a deep-sea drilling expedition that was focused on finding rare gas hydrate deposits in the sea floor, which could prove to be a possible source of energy.
It is solid methyl hydrate, scooped off the ocean floor off Victoria and photographed before it sublimed to natural gas.
"We probably sacrificed a lot of our sample by taking a photo of this," admitted Riedel, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada working out of the Geological Survey of Canada laboratory in Sidney.
Riedel was part of a Canadian team that lured the deep-sea drilling research vessel, JOIDES Resolution to Canadian waters to sample elusive gas hydrates deposits about 100 kilometres off Victoria.
In the turbulent October waters, the ship slowly lowered its drilling apparatus 300 metres down, and collected 10-metre core samples.
It is hard to imagine a bubble so big that it could endanger the 143-metre long ship, but some of the test sites Riedel proposed were nixed for this reason.
They discovered that gas hydrates only form in a thin layer in the ocean floor, higher up than they thought, and only in sand.
Gas hydrates are mix of natural gas (mostly methane) and ice that form under pressure in cold water.
If the hydrates dissolve because the temperature rises or the pressure drops, the layers of sand and silt can slump, triggering a tsunami.
Depending on how much methane is sequestered in gas hydrates, one theory goes that a relatively small temperature rise in the ocean could hasten global warming as the methane bubbled off.
But perhaps the main reason methyl hydrates are such a hot research topic is that methane is a relatively clean fossil fuel, the main hydrocarbon in natural gas.
If the gas hydrate forms in narrow bands and only in sand, that might be why scientists often miss it or find it in one spot, but not 50 metres away.
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