U.S. Geological Survey
Marine and Coastal Geology Program
Gas (Methane) Hydrates — A New Frontier
Methane trapped in marine sediments as a hydrate represents such an immense carbon reservoir that it must be considered a dominant factor in estimating unconventional energy resources; the role of methane as a ‘greenhouse’ gas also must be carefully assessed.
Dr. William Dillon,
U.S. Geological Survey
Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood.
Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice. Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.
The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.
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http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
I have long written that we are almost literally AWASH in hydrocarbons that can be converted into suitable liquid fuels. The ONLY issue was that of total cost.
We do not burn crude oil in our vehicles and aircraft. We burn a technical product that is made, or more properly, constructed, by taking a feedstock of molecules and atoms that are taken apart and reassembled to make the fuel we want. The ONLY issue is the cost of the fuel, for the instant that a new feedstock comes along that is less expensive than the existing one, it will be used.
People who claim “peak oil” are ignorant of economics just as much as the useful idiots who claim there is a shortage of water.