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Oil Producers Find Alternative in Methane Gas

Nearly every expert and professional, if not all, are agreeing that easy oil is gone; over the last century or so the conventional oil industry has seen a decline in the reserves that used to be full not so long ago.

Such a deterioration in fossil fuel resources means producers have had to be inventive with their technology to reach previously untouchable depths and crevices, and have had to consider unexplored territories and sources.

This is also known as experimental drilling and is a method employed by top companies worldwide in search of new fossil fuel sources. Among these companies are BP, who are testing a deep carboniferous era horizon in the North Sea, and independent researchers considering frozen mud as a source. One very popular fuel source that has caught the interest of both China and Japan, and recently some Americans, is methane gas found soaked into ice at the bottom of the ocean. Previously this possibility would not have been explored due to the danger and cost it would have posed, and so traditional oil rigs have so far been disregarding the ice.

It is a result of favourable timing that methane gas is now finally explored: coincidentally, when the oil industry began looking for other options, the misconceptions about its level of safety were researched. Whilst previously many oil operators believed methane-soaked ice was unstable and prone to explosions, causing infrastructure to collapse or pipes to clog up or break, extensive studies have found that instead, it behaves calmly.

Dashboard believes that methane gas could be a great alternative fuel source because, not only is there an abundance of it, but it is readily available from existing extraction locations. Furthermore, some operators already have methane-detecting equipment, which brings down the cost of exploring methane gas as an option. Formerly seen as a problem or even a pollutant of traditional resources by top industry organisations, methane gas could now be a great asset to these very same companies.