IEA: Natural Gas Can Supply World For 250 Years
Supplies of natural gas could last more than 250 years if Asian and European economies follow the U.S. unconventional reserves, the IEA said.
The abundance of shale gas and other forms of so-called unconventional gas discovered in the United States prompted a global rush to explore for the new resource.
The International Energy Agency said Australia is taking the lead in the push toward unconventional gas, though China, India and Indonesia are close behind. European companies are taking preliminary steps to unlock unconventional gas as are other regions.
“Production of ‘unconventional’ gas in the U.S. has rocketed in the past few years, going beyond even the most optimistic forecasts,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a gas analyst at the IEA. “It is no wonder that its success has sparked such international interest.”
Shale gas production in the United States is booming and the IEA estimates that unconventional gas makes up around 12 percent of the global supply.
Global supplies of natural gas could last for another 130 years at current consumption rates. That time frame could double with unconventional gas, the IEA said.
“Despite the many uncertainties associated with production, countries are still prepared to take risks and invest time and money in exploration and production, because of the potential long-term benefits,” Corbeau said.
from the GWPF
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Flask — “I was talking about Earth, not Titan”
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You were responding to the sea of methane on Titan (Smokey, Jan 23), hence your vague reference to “other parts of the solar system.” If my being specific was a “distortion” of your meaning, I apologize.
The fullerene-caged oxygen in the article is from a new model and is not, like the oxygen itself, a fact. The fullerenes, in the model, are attached to aromatic hydrocarbons–“compounds also found on Earth in oil, coal and tar deposits”:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/saturn20100701.html
Oxygen is irrelevant anyway, because UV alone will degrade methane.
UV does degrade methane on Titan, so production or accumulation must exceed the rate of destruction. But this returns us to the question begged by the abundance of methane in the first place: where does it all come from?
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“The methane giving an orange hue to Saturn’s giant moon Titan likely comes from geologic processes in its interior according to measurements from the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), a Goddard Space Flight Center instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe.”
Goddard Space Flight Center, “Titan’s Mysterious Methane Comes From Inside, Not The Surface, 2005
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Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking discussion.
Khwarizmi:
Methane is found on the outer gas planets, and many of their moons, not so vague a statement, especially as I thought I was responding to someone who paid attention to astronomy.
Many statements in the thought-provoking link you provided are disingenuous, and this one; “Fossils preserved in oil shale, not converted to oil” is one of the most blatant, captioning a picture of shale containing bryozoan fossils in an oil shale, suggesting that someone expects that the beautiful bryozoan skeletons (primarily composed of calcium carbonate) somehow can be transformed into hydrocarbons.
Here is my original statement:
Gold’s hypothesis is the only way that calcium carbonate could eventually be transformed into hydrocarbons (methane) by combining with water in the subduction zones. This still seems to be an extra and more than required step in hydrocarbon genesis. Conventional oil exploration is still successful, proponents of abiotic oil should drill to find oil in places where only their theory would adequately explain the presence of any hydrocarbons that might be found. I would hope that they use their own money for this and do not apply for grants from any government, however, because I think it’s doomed to failure.