China's natural gas hydrate development has a long way to go

The Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) has announced that natural gas hydrate samples had been discovered in north-western China's Qinghai province, the first land-based find of this kind in China.
Zhang Hongtao, the engineer general of the MLR, made the announcement on September 26 in Beijing.

According to initial estimates, China, the third largest frozen soil country, with a frozen soil area of 2.15 mm sq km, has a prospective natural gas hydrate reserves of 35 bn tons of oil equivalent. He said the discovery was made at a height above sea level of 4, 062 km in Qinghai province's Tianjun county, where some areas have perpetually frozen soil.
According to the MLR, this is the first find of this kind in low-latitude onshore areas in China, providing strong evidence that the country's frozen soil area could have abundant natural gas hydrate reserves.

Besides the discovery, a deep-water natural hydrate reserve has also been found in the South China Sea in May 2007 with an estimated reserve of 18.5 bn tons of oil equivalent.
Natural gas hydrate, also called "flammable ice", is regarded as one of the earth's untapped energy resources. It can be an important and cleaner substitute for traditional energy sources such as oil, natural gas and coal.

It is estimated that natural gas hydrate reserves in the world are almost twice reserves of traditional natural gas, oil and coal in terms of oil-equivalent tonnage, or 50 times traditional natural gas reserves. However, natural gas hydrate has a long way to go before it can be developed on an industrial scale because geographic and environmental protection issues have to be overcome.

First of all, such an energy resource could only exist in deep-water areas or frozen-soil areas of the world due to its volatile nature. Furthermore, its geographic inaccessibility would provide a major headache for developers trying to tap the enormous natural gas hydrate reserves in China.

As well as this, environmental protection would be an insurmountable issue, given current level of technology available. The onshore reserves of the hydrate are mostly located in environmental sensitive Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
According to China's current environment protection laws, before any large-scale development of a resource, developers have to work out robust environment protection measures to make sure there is little impact on the environment and eco-system in the area. Similarly, deep-water exploration has to deal with environmental and geographic problems.

Zhang Hongtao said these obstacles means it would take China 30 years to prepare for the offshore deepwater exploration and development of natural gas hydrate, and at least 10 to 15 years to start even tentative exploration of onshore reserves in frozen-soil zone. He cautioned that large-scale commercial exploration and development of natural gas hydrate might devastate the fragile environment and eco-balance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Wen Huaijun, a senior engineer of the Qinghai Provincial Bureau of the China National Administration of Coal Geology (CNACG), said that Qinghai's natural gas hydrate finding has an average depth of 130 to 300 meters, providing relatively favourable conditions for exploration and development. But he echoed Zhang Hongtao's caution on environment protection problems, stressing that there is still a long way to go before any breakthrough would take place.

According to science research reports, natural gas hydrate is volatile and dangerous at normal temperature and atmospheric pressure. Current technology could not provide a reliable solution to check its volatility and great risk to the environment.
So before a technological breakthrough is proven to be feasible and reliable, it would be better to keep Pandora's box tightly shut.