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Methane hydrates: Gold’s predictions vindicated

By Kennedy Maize

Shades of Tommy Gold. The U.S. Geological Survey this week said it has concluded that there are vast “technically recoverable” methane hydrate reserves trapped in the Arctic coastal plain that could provide some 85.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a significant addition to U.S. natural gas reserves.

Gas hydrates, also known as methane clathrates, are an unconventional source of gas, consisting of methane trapped in ice formations at high pressure and low temperatures. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the late Thomas Gold (1920-2004), a Cornell University astrophysicist and well-known scientific maverick, argued that the earth had vast deposits of methane hydrates.

Gold argued that hydrocarbons were the result of forces of physics in the formation of the planet, not the conventional view that oil and gas and coal were the result of the decay of vegetable and animal sources buried by fossilization. His term for the origin of hydrocarbons was “abiogenic.”

Later, Gold argued in his 1998 book The Deep Hot Biosphere that petroleum and coal were the result of the abiogenic methane and deep-sea bacterial action to turn gas into liquids and solids.

Gold predicted – when I interviewed him twenty years ago for The Energy Daily – that vast, undiscovered natural gas resources were locked in ice in the Arctic and in deep sea beds. He said natural gas was essentially an inexhaustible resource, a product of the creation of the planet. Methane – one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms (CH4) – he argued, is a simple molecule, easily formed from the forces that created the earth and likely one of the most common chemicals surviving the earth’s birth.

Gold, despite a reputation as an original thinker and possessing impeccable academic credentials, was greeted with scorn by conventional geologists. They said he was a crank. Methane hydrates, they said, were an interesting anomaly, but could never constitute a major source of natural gas. Astrophysical forces could never overcome the dominance of the doctrine of dead dinosaurs.

Since then, methane hydrates have proven to be ubiquitous in the places where Gold predicted they would occur. Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Interior Department have looked on hydrates as a major potential supply of new natural gas.

The USGS press release last week said its assessment of North Slope Alaska methane hydrates “is the first ever resource estimate of technically recoverable natural gas hydrates, which are naturally occurring, ice-like solids in which water molecules trap natural gas in a cage-like structure known as a clathrate.” USGS said the estimated 85.4 TCF of gas trapped in the North Slope clathrates “accounts for 11.5% of the volume of gas within all other undiscovered, technically recoverable gas resources onshore and in the state waters of the United States.”

In geology-speak, said USGS, “‘technically recoverable’ means the resource can be discovered, developed, and produced using current technology and industry practices.” According to Energy Information Administration data, the U.S. uses about 23 TCF of natural gas annually.

To put the North Slope hydrates estimate in context, the USGS noted that the Wyoming Basin holds some 85 TCF of technically recoverable reserves, the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska (NPRA) holds 73 TCF (not including hydrates), the Western Gulf Basin in Texas holds 71 TCF, and the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and Colorado holds 50 TCF. Conventional resources in Alaska’s North Slope, says the USGS, total about 119 TCF.

According to the USGS, the area assessed for methane hydrate resources runs from the NRPA on the west to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the east (bumping up against the Canadian border) and from the Brooks Range north to the federally-managed offshore boundary, three miles off the coast of Alaska.

According to an account in the Washington Post, some Alaska environmentalists are critical of the USGS report and the push for development of natural gas hydrates. The newspaper quoted Athan Manuel of the Sierra Club that the technology to capture methane from its ice-like structures “is a very destructive way to extract nature gas.”

This environmental objection, of course, is an assertion, not a statement of fact. USGS said it has not yet assessed the environmental impacts of extracting gas from clathrates, which, the agency told the Post, is “the next step” in its analysis.

The USGS report could boost long-delayed efforts to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope to the lower 48 states. Congress has authorized a pipeline, and provided some generous subsidies, but squabbling among producers, and doubts about long-term gas prices, has slowed development.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the defeated Republican candidate for vice president, has tried to knock industry heads together in her state to come up with a plan for the pipeline. Despite her campaign claims that she got the pipeline on track, that is not yet the case. She exaggerated her accomplishments, although she did force a change in the stalemate created by her predecessor, former Alaska Gov. and Sen. Frank Murkowski. The pipeline, if it can be built, is at least a decade away from delivering gas, according to most accounts.

Power politics: Waxman v. Dingell in commerce committee

By Kennedy Maize

Nothing fails like success. Already, Democrats in Congress are at each others’ throats about sharing the spoils from the Obama victory.

The most serious fight so far pits Hollywood liberal Henry Waxman against the long-time chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Democrat John Dingell of Michigan. Waxman has launched a high-profile attempt to oust the 82-year-old Dingell, who himself won the chairmanship in 1981 by overthrowing long-time Democratic chairman Harley Staggers of West Virginia.

This could be an epic battle, and emblematic of what happens when a party wins a large victory and exposes the schisms in its members. Waxman and Dingell have long been adversaries as they have served together on the House energy committee, going back at least 25 years to the battle over the reauthorization of the 1977 Clean Air Act. They famously brawled over most air act provisions, with Waxman pushing an environmental agenda and Dingell holding out for more modest, industry-backed approaches.

They fought to a standstill, and the issue didn’t get resolved until the 1990 (Bush I) push finally put a new version of the air act on the books.

Since then, Waxman (widely known as the “Wascally Wabbit of Westwood”) has been pushing Dingell on climate legislation. Waxman, representing a Hollywood district, is part of the more liberal, California contingent of Democrats, and an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Dingell’s roots are in the Rust Belt, where he has been a stalwart of the domestic auto industry. One source calls Dingell “the Jack Kavorkian of Detroit,” arguing that he has assisted in the auto industry’s suicide of bad car designs and poor management practices.

But Dingell, whose physical skills are showing his age, is one of the savviest legislators in history. He has consistently defended his committee’s enormous jurisdiction and fended off attempts to cut into his power.

On the other hand, Waxman has a history of usurping power. In 1979, at the beginning of his third term in Congress, Waxman mounted a successful campaign to take over the Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee from the widely-revered Democrat Richardson Preyer of North Carolina. Waxman made the case that the Democrats should reverse their bias for seniority, and prevailed. It was an early red flag that this Californian was a political force, which proved to be the case in the years ahead.

Insiders handicap the race in Waxman’s favor. Dingell is somewhat physically infirm, although his political skills are sharp. But Waxman has the implicit support of Pelosi, who has a long career of bumping into Dingell, the most senior Democrat in the House.

Dingell’s father was elected to represent his Michigan district in 1932. The elder Dingell died in 1955, and is said — perhaps this is an urban legend — to have told his son on his death bed, “Johnny, don’t let them take our guns away.”

Nevertheless, Johnny won the seat to succeed his father and his been in the House ever since. An avid hunter and fisherman, Dingell is perhaps the leading congressional opponent of gun control legislation, although a conventional liberal on many other issues, and a dedicated environmentalist on land use and wilderness topics.

Big John will pull out all of his political guns to defeat Waxman, a worthy opponent. Check Las Vegas for the odds on this contest.

The “Name Game” begins in Washington

It’s entirely predictable. Once a new president is elected, the most popular topic in Washington becomes “the name game.” Who’s in, who’s out, who will get the political plum jobs.

Indeed, there is an official government publication, called The Plum Book, that lists the 7,000 or so political jobs that an incoming administration can appoint to ride herd on the hundreds of thousands of career civil servants who actually make the government tick (or not). The book, published alternately by the Senate Committee on Government Affairs and the House Committee on Government Relations, has the official title: United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions. It is available from the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Bill Clinton drew criticism in 1992 and early 1993 for dilly-dallying about his immediate White House staff and cabinet and subcabinet selections. His transition to driving the ship of state was quite rocky, in part because he didn’t manage the selection of his team well.

President-elect Obama appears to be aware of that, and is moving quickly to put his folks in place.

The first choice was Rahm Emanuel, 48, to be chief of staff. Emanuel is a Clinton White House veteran, as well as a three-term congressman from Obama’s Chicago, who moved rapidly up the House leadership ladder. Emanuel is known for having sharp elbows in political disputes, a sharp mind, and a foul-mouthed, in-your-face demeanor. He is said to run a very tight ship.

The first order of business for the incoming administration is to line up “transition teams” to take a close look at the functioning of the federal agencies, and make recommendations on how, or whether, to reorganize them, and who should be the new leaders. This was an innovation of the Reagan administration in 1980. It proved to be valuable to the incoming administration, as well as giving the public a close view of the guts of administrative management at the various governmental institutions.

The Washington Post on Thursday, Nov. 6, reported that David Hayes, a former top-level Interior Department official in the Clinton administration, and an attorney at the well-connected Washington law firm of Latham & Watkins, would be running Obama’s transition operation for the Interior Department, the Energy Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Obama, the Post reported, has also named former Clinton-era EPA administrator Carol Browner (an Al Gore acolyte) to his transition team. The newspaper said other transition officials in energy and natural resources include former Interior solicitor John Leshy (well regarded by environmental groups), former fish, wildlife and parks chief Donald Barry, and former under secretary of state Frank Loy.

The overall leaders of the Obama transition, according to National Public Radio, are former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, a long-time Obama advisor, and Pete Rouse, Obama’s Senate chief of staff. It is said they will organize “parachute teams” to drop into the agencies and engage in bureaucratic intelligence gathering. Although the transition teams have not yet hit the ground – they’ve been working on background for a couple of month, according to press reports – rumors are already circulating about high-level appointments. There is speculation that Jason Grumet, the Obama campaign’s energy policy advisor, is headed to either DOE or EPA.

On the regulatory front, several sources have said that Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Greg Jaczko, a Democrat, is a certainty to be the new NRC chairman. Jaczko, a Ph.D. in physics, was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s technical advisor on nuclear issues, including the Yucca Mountain, Nev., waste site. His elevation to the NRC chairmanship, and Reid’s expanded control of the Senate, say the sources, could effectively doom the Yucca Mountain project.

At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to the same sources, a skirmish is already underway about who will be the Democratic chairman. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is said to be pushing his candidate, Commissioner Suedeen Kelly, to replace Joe Kelliher as chairman. Her term expires June 30, 2009. Republican Kelliher, who by most accounts has been a fine FERC chairman, has a term that expires June 30, 2012.

Sources suggest that Reid isn’t willing to give Bingaman his choice, preferring Commissioner Jon Wellinghof, former Nevada consumer advocate, for the chairmanship. His term expires June 30, 2013. Reid is also said to insist that he will pick the next Democratic replacement on the commission. Republican Commissioner Philip Moeller’s term is up June 30, 2010. FERC, by law, must consist of three members from the party in power, with the chairmanship part of that cohort.

Does the partisan makeup of FERC matter? Probably not, according to many who follow the agency on a day-to-day basis. But FERC can become an important political symbol when energy policy goes awry. That was the case when Enron imploded, competitive retail markets failed, and the Bush administration was forced to fire it own pick for the FERC chairmanship, Curt Hebert, replacing him with Texas regulator Pat Wood III.

Watch this space.

More confounding hurricane science

More science to stir the pot on the hurricane-global warming issue appears in last Thursday’s issue of Science magazine. Three researchers fundamentally question the conventional wisdom that there is “a causal connection between warming tropical sea surface temperatures and Atlantic hurricane activity.”

While many scientists – and even more environmentalists – believe global warming and Atlantic hurricanes are linked, the hot air is increasingly leaking from that balloon. Leading hurricane scientists, such as NOAA’s Chris Landsea, have long argued that the evidence for a link between CO2 emissions and hurricane activity is weak. Looking at recent hurricane activity and intensity, Landsea at the National Hurricane Center in Miami last week told USA Today, “These are likely due to a natural climate fluctuation in the Atlantic.”

Gabriel Vecci of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Brian Soden of the University of Miami in the Science “perspective” article question the concept that increased Atlantic hurricane activity since the early 1990s is a result of man-made global warming. Rather, they say that the increase in activity “could also be the result of the warming of the Atlantic relative to other ocean basins, which is not expected to continue in the long term.”

Current evidence, they write, is inconclusive, and the statistical approach – correlating warmer surface temperatures and more hurricanes – is simplistic. Their analysis, they say, establishes that “we are presently at an impasse. Additional empirical studies are unlikely to resolve this conflict in the near future….”

As an alternative to the conventional statistical approach, the team writes, scientists must also “offer alternative theories and models that can be used to test the physical arguments” underlying the current approach. Taking a “fuller, dynamically based understanding of the tropical atmosphere must be of the highest priority, including assessing and improving to quality of regional [sea surface temperature] projections in global climate models.”

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Methane hydrates: Gold’s predictions vindicated

Power politics: Waxman v. Dingell in commerce committee

The “Name Game” begins in Washington

More confounding hurricane science

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