Methane

Big news out today. The President has set aside research money to promote cars using natural gas. Everyone agrees that someday we will have to transition away from fossil fuels but in the past Obama has talked only about non fossil fuels, things like solar and wind. Obama wants to support research of "cost-effective technologies" of vehicles that run on electricity, homegrown biofuels, fuel cells and natural gas. "So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an energy security trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good." This is the smart reasonable approach. First replace coal with natural gas, then replace oil with natural gas and then replace that with some new technology like hydrogen. This will take many years so the transition must be slow and well planned so as not to disrupt the economic growth that the country so disparately needs. Not only do we have newly discovered supplies of natural gas using fracking there is a much larger supply located beneath the ocean floors. It is in the form of methyl hydrate. This is the natural gas molecule methane surrounded by water molecules and in liquid form. It is formed by the cold temperature and high pressure at ocean debts of a mile or more. It was first discovered in the Gulf of Mexico several years ago and more recently off the coast of Japan. This leads to the belief that it is under the oceans around the world. Unlike natural gas in oil wells which comes up on its own or along with the oil the methyl hydrate must be pumped up and this is a safety feature preventing it from escaping as is often the case in oil wells. One of the side benefits is that the methane will be replaced with carbon dioxide from the air as it is pumped up and thus reducing the green-house gas effect. Internal combustion engines running on natural gas is not a new technology as there are currently 20 million vehicles on the road around the world. We would start here with trucks and truck stops would have methane pumps and in time expand to cars and regular filling stations. It is calculated that just replacing semis with natural gas would eliminate our need for Saudi oil.