China Touts Gas Hydrate Find in Tibet

(MoneyWatch)  Beneath the glaciers and permafrost of Tibet, a vast untapped resource exists, just waiting to be dug out, according to China's Ministry of Land and Resources. A number of Chinese websites are reporting that the country has discovered buried gas hydrates in the region at 130 meters and deeper.

Gas hydrates are a form of frozen methane, bonded with water, that might be a huge source of energy today if only they were easier to reach -- most reserves are deep in the ocean, where they remain frozen more easily. The Chinese discovery appears to be one of the few significant terrestrial finds to date.

Even on land, it will take new technological innovation to efficiently mine hydrates. That seems to be recognized in China, where it was reported when large undersea deposits were found that it might be decades before they were exploitable. Every article I've spotted from a Chinese source has the same prediction for the terrestrial find: 10 years.

That's still a relatively conservative estimate. But almost every other detail is given positive spin.

The financial magazine Caijing, without citing any particular source, says gas hydrates are "regarded as the most promising strategic resource in the 21st century," while CCTV reports (video below) that scientists, again unnamed, "believe it is an ideal alternative to oil and gas."

In other countries, there's typically a little more caution regarding methane deposits, both undersea and in terrestrial permafrost. An article printed in the Japan Times a few days before China announced its find presents a list of potentially dangerous methane reserves, which could cause runaway emissions if caused to melt by existing warming trends.

It could be that the ongoing melting of the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau is actually what helped Chinese scientists find the deposit. If so, there's a handy argument to throw back at those already horrified by the scale of the oil and coal industries -- the methane will eventually escape into the atmosphere anyway, so why not capture it and burn it?

Here's the CCTV broadcast in English -- note the rather staged-looking celebration at the end: