China Wants to Mine Fire Ice

China announced an energy breakthrough. Experts mined 'fire ice' from the bottom of the South Korean Sea. We're talking about a molecular compound of water and natural gas. In fact, Soviet scientists discovered it more than half a century ago. Meanwhile, in China, they assure us that in the future the whole world will start extracting this substance, and their breakthrough means more than the shale revolution. Alisa Romanova tried to figure out whether and when this new type of fuel could replace oil and gas. These are the first shots of what was called a historic breakthrough in China. The PRC was trying to achieve this for 20 years. Gas hydrate erupts from a deposit at a depth of more than a kilometer. A molecular compound of water and methane. The fuel of the future. This is how it’s called in the world. There is more of it than oil, gas, and coal on the planet put together. Enough for centuries. This will be a hydrate extraction revolution led by China, following the US breakthrough in the production of shale gas. It will affect the development of the entire world energy sector. Gas hydrate is usually hidden beneath the seafloor near the shore and under permafrost. That is, its formation requires two factors — cold and high pressure. Fire ice is natural gas, but in a different form. Due to high pressure and low temperatures, it crystallizes and looks more like soft snow. When it melts, it emits water and methane. One cubic meter of such ice contains 164 cubic meters of natural gas. Scientists from the USSR were the first to assume that such fuel existed back in the 60s. Studies were carried out at the Gubkin State University. Since then, many countries have conducted experiments. But it has never come to production because of the high price and unprofitability. Japan got the farthest into it. But China claims that it was the first to produce fire ice in such quantities from the seabed, and that the operation was conducted using its own equipment. The technology is also Chinese. But is it true that we've broken the ice? There is nothing fantastic here. It can simply be said that technically it’s an experimental technology. They thought that they could freeze this soil together with gas, take it out, and extract gas on the surface. In fact, it's not a new fuel, it's not a new form of fuel, it's usual natural gas, methane, which we extract from traditional deposits. And since they don’t have their own traditional deposits, they started inventing some new methods of extraction. Of course, we can’t talk about industrial-scale volume extraction yet. China plans to reach this goal by 2030. But some Chinese experts think that there is nothing to expect until 2050. It’s still a question how profitable this is. The Japanese calculated that 1,000 cubic meters of gas extracted from fire ice could cost from $400 to $1,300. 2-3 times higher than natural gas. Most importantly, they didn’t publish data about how much it cost to get this methane. That is, you can fly to the moon to get fuel. Another question is how much money you'll spend on it. And the real question is whether a commercial technology will be developed or not. It’s not clear yet how much gas can be extracted from explored and estimated reserves. Nearly two centuries passed between the drilling of the first commercial well in US shale formations to the beginning of industrial extraction in large volumes.