Japan extracts 'frozen gas' from seabed

First country to successfully produce methane hydrate gas offshore

Japan has become the first nation to successfully extract ‘frozen gas’ from deposits from under the sea.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the news with images showing what they claim is gas flaming from a pipe at the project, which is located 50 miles off the coast of central Japan. This breakthrough of harvesting methane hydrate, a form of methane gas which is frozen below the seabed, could be a massive step towards commercial production of the gas for the country, which imports most of its energy due to its own scarce resources.

Commercialising the production of 'frozen gas' could help solve Japan's energy problems

(Image source - The Guardian)

The process of extracting the gas, which uses a technology developed to reduce pressure in the underground layers holding the methane hydrate 4,363 feet below the sea surface, is expensive compared to other forms of gas production. However, this hasn’t put off Ryo Minami, director of the oil and gas division at Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources, who believes they will find of way of lowering the cost of collecting ‘frozen gas’, telling the Financial Times, ‘Ten years ago, everybody knew there was shale gas in the ground, but to extract it was too costly. Yet now it's commercialised’.