: Gas industry can help fight climate change #IndiaNEWS #Education Hyderabad: Permafrost is the layer of permanently frozen earth that lies just beneath the land surface in Arctic regions. It formed

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Gas industry can help fight climate change #IndiaNEWS #Education
Hyderabad: Permafrost is the layer of permanently frozen earth that lies just beneath the land surface in Arctic regions. It formed over the past few million years when ice ages predominated. Now, under the influence of global warming, it is melting. And research suggests that this may have reached the point of triggering runaway climate change unless we can find ways to intervene.
The problem is that permafrost contains huge amounts of methane, natural gas that’s being progressively released as the ice melts. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, having up to 80 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide. We can’t stop this process, but could we capture the methane as it is released? It just so happens that the gas industry has the technology to do just this, and join the fight against climate change.
Trouble on the tundra
Scientists working in northern Siberia announced in March this year that they had identified some 7,000 small hillocks created by methane that has been released underground and is pushing the ground upwards. The hillocks are between 50 and 100 metres across.
In 2014, scientists also started discovering strange craters in the landscape, which appear to have been formed as a result of explosions. It seems that the pressure inside the hillocks builds up until a huge methane bubble is released with explosive force. These violent gas releases are dangerous to people and infrastructure, and scientists are working on ways of estimating the local threat.
Similar mounds have been discovered in the shallow waters off the Siberian shelf, and in 1995 a drilling vessel accidentally drilled into one, releasing a vast bubble of methane that almost sank the vessel. They are a massive new source of greenhouse gas, making runaway climate change more likely. And there’s something that the gas industry could do about it.
Right kind of mining
The industry is already experienced in collecting coal seam and shale gas from large numbers of widely distributed, relatively small wells. It should be possible to use the same technology to tap into these massive gas bubbles before they burst, collect the methane and transport it to market.
If this turns out not to be commercially viable, internationally funded subsidies may be needed to provide an incentive to the gas industry. If there is no prospect at all of marketing the gas, at least it could be flared burnt converting methane into CO₂ This would be far better environmentally than allowing the methane to escape. But it would need to be fully funded by governments.
Petroleum companies, meanwhile, are considering mining reserves of frozen methane that lie far below the surface of the Arctic, and that is unlikely to be released by natural processes in the foreseeable future.

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