31/03/2020
- Volume of fuel extracted from gas hydrates is a new world record, natural resources ministry says
- Month-long trial also sets a ‘solid technical foundation for commercial exploitation’, it says
China conducted its first operation to extract natural gas from gas hydrates in the South China Sea in 2017. Photo: Reuters
China said on Thursday it extracted 861,400 cubic metres of natural gas from gas hydrates found in the
South China Sea during a month-long trial that ended last week.
The production process, which ran from February 17 to March 18, also set two world records: one for the largest total volume extracted and another for the most produced – 287,000 cubic metres – on a single day, the Ministry of Natural Resources said on its website.
The gas was extracted from an area in the north of the disputed waterway, and from a depth of about 1,225 metres, it said.
The success of the latest trial set a “solid technical foundation for commercial exploitation”, the ministry said, adding that China was the first country in the world to exploit gas hydrates using a horizontal well-drilling technique.
Also known as flammable ice, gas hydrates are icelike solids composed mostly of methane. According to figures from the US Department of Energy, one cubic metre of gas hydrate releases 164 cubic metres of conventional natural gas once extracted.
The South China Sea test coincided with sharp movements in global
oil and gas prices. China, which is the world’s largest oil and gas importer, has been keen to identify alternative fuel sources, including gas hydrates, to strengthen its energy security.
The official Economic Daily reported in 2017 that China’s reserves of flammable ice were equivalent to about 100 billion tonnes of oil, of which 80 billion tonnes were in the South China Sea.
Yang Fuqiang, a senior energy adviser at the Beijing office of the National Resources Defence Council, an international environmental advocacy group, said that natural gas consumption in China was relatively low compared with that of other countries.
“The demand for natural gas is large and the prospect is promising, but it’s hard to say when China will have commercial development of flammable ice,” he said.
While the government has set a target for natural gas to account for 10 per cent of China’s annual energy consumption by the end of this year, in 2019, the figure was just 8.3 per cent.
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Fan Xiao, chief engineer with the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau, said that compared to conventional fuels like oil and gas, flammable ice was still too costly to extract to make its widespread use commercially viable.
“It is an important resource, but exploiting it in a sustainable, economically viable way is still some way off,” he said.
There were also environmental concerns, such as methane leaking during the exploitation process, which increased greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Yang agreed, saying there would be leakage of methane during both mining and transport.
“If the leakage exceeds 5 per cent of the total, it will offset its contribution to carbon reduction,” he said.
Source: SCMP
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10/08/2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – Eighteen people were killed and 14 were missing in eastern China on Saturday in a landslide triggered by a major typhoon, which caused widespread transport disruptions and the evacuation of more than one million people, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Typhoon Lekima made landfall early on Saturday in the eastern province of Zhejiang with maximum winds of 187 km (116 miles) per hour, although it had weakened from its earlier designation as a “super” typhoon, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Thousands of flights were cancelled in eastern China, according to the country’s aviation regulator, with most flights into and out of Shanghai’s two major airports cancelled on Saturday afternoon, their websites showed.
China’s weather bureau on Saturday issued an orange alert, its second highest, after posting a red alert on Friday, when the storm forced flight cancellations in Taiwan and shut markets and businesses on the island.
The deadly landslide occurred about 130 km north of the coastal city of Wenzhou, when a natural dam collapsed in an area deluged with 160 millimetres (6.3 inches) of rain within three hours, CCTV reported.
The storm was moving northward at 15 kph and was gradually weakening, Xinhua reported, citing the weather bureau.
High winds and heavy rains battered the financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, and Shanghai Disneyland was shut for the day.
Nearly 200 hundred trains through the city of Jinan in Shandong province had been suspended until Monday, Xinhua reported.
More than 250,000 residents in Shanghai and 800,000 in Zhejiang province had been evacuated due to the typhoon, and 2.72 million households in Zhejiang had power blackouts as strong wind and rain downed electricity transmission lines, state media reported.
Some 200 houses in six cities in Zhejiang had collapsed, and 66,300 hectares (163,830 acres) of farmland had been destroyed, CCTV said.
The storm was predicted to reach Jiangsu province by the early hours of Sunday and veer over the Yellow Sea before continuing north and making landfall again in Shandong province, CCTV said.
Coastal businesses in Zhejiang were shut and the Ministry of Emergency Management warned of potential risk of fire, explosions and toxic gas leaks at chemical parks and oil refineries.
Source: Reuters
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