(The Derrick Barge D/B Cappy Bisso. Photo Bisso Marine.)

The Japanese government has revealed that its Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corp. has dispatched a mining ship that will begin the world’s first offshore test to extract methane hydrate from the seabed…The oil, gas, and metal company’s deep-sea drilling ship Chikyu set sail last week for an offshore well that (was) drilled last year… Measuring 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) deep, the well reaches a 980-feet layer of methane hydrate under the seabed, where the testing is to take place. Also known as “burning ice,” there has been much attention on methane hydrate as a new plentiful natural fuel resource.

Japan Daily Press

You know me. I am always interested in the Next Big Thing. It helps keep my mind off the awful present, the one where local police forces are investing in Predator Drones and earnest lawmakers are tinkering with the Constitution, and the climate loonies want to shut down all the power plants.

Why shivering in the dark is better than being a couple degrees warmer eludes me, but this seems to be more about a strange secular religion than science.

Rather than worry about something none of us can do much about without wrapping ourselves in mumbo-jumbo, I would prefer to think about how to deal with a world that now seems to be swimming in hyrdocarbons. I remember as late as last year there was continuing hysteria about “peak oil,” which predicted that the moment in history had arrived in which production would start to decline precipitously.

So, here is something else to get hysterical about. I saw the article about the Japanese methane drilling and wrote to Boats to ask what he thought, having been around the Gulf offshore drilling industry most of his professional life.

He was kind enough to write back from The Bayou, where he consulted with Namazu the gigantic catfish:

“There are a lot of hydrocarbons in the world,” he said. “The problem was that we didn’t have the technology to recover them economically. This is not the next big wave after fracking unless a lot more of these deposits are found. I view it as a side bar in the growing “deep water” technology.”

“There is one old piece of deep-water technology that nobody thought of as part of drilling and production technology that we have let slip. We need some serious deep submergence vehicles with heavy-duty mechanical arms, not for mining but for emergency response and repair, and environmental protection.”

I shook my head in agreement. In my days as an anti-submarine analyst, I was fascinated with the classified equipment that could go anywhere in the world ocean and conduct operations on the sea-floor. All sorts of stuff is down there, as you know. But the ability to get at commercial problems is a useful thing. Boats continued:

“Our boys in the Texas State Universities where all this first gets down on paper are great at developing technology that can reach the formation under the sea and haul marketable substances to the surface. But when things go wrong on the subsea assemblies you get the capping problem that we had with the BP disaster.”

“Basically, corrections at that depth run from the surface are like trying to stick a wet noodle up a wildcat’s ass at 50 yards. On the BP well-head we couldn’t “make the stab.” So, we had to keep fabricating bigger and bigger “jar tops.””

“At one point they had me huddled with some serious ordinance guys at the Naval Academy trying to see if we could do the Russian thing and use a shaped charge, preferably non-nuclear, and just bury the sucker.”

“I didn’t get but a day or two into those discussions before they finally got it capped. One thing I do recall is that the Navy guys were very sure that a directional non-nuclear charge could do the job, but the Aggies I was in contact with warned that the overburden at the site was paper thin and any explosive solution would open up fissures and possibly make things worse.”

I nodded again. We military types are pretty linear in our thinking.

“As soon as the well was capped they pulled me off and started me on the next thing. But I’m convinced that all this deep water drilling, mineral recovery technology needs industrial strength deep submergence vehicle back up. Fixing complex mechanical assemblies on the deep sea floor is much harder than sending things down and sucking things up. Only some serious deep submergence development can prevent wildcat’s ass syndrome.”

“Unfortunately, that technology is the realm of “response/rescue” and not production, so everyone is ignoring it. Everyone also ignored my idea that would have worked fast.”

“The lower Mississippi is full of barges and land-fill material to maintain the extensive levee system. I wanted to load hundreds of barges with sandbagged material and get our best Navy ASW guys to help us figure the drop. Enough of that dropped right over the well and the outflow would have been reduced to the level of just another natural seep of which the Gulf is full.”

“With the barges on hand and the tugs and material available, we probably could have caped that sucker in ten days flat. If they had put a real salvage master like the folks at Cappy Bisso in charge, that’s probably what would have happened. Bisso guilt a heavy-lift juggernaut back in 1976 that would have done the trick nicely. The Cappy Bisso can lift 700 tons in water ten feet deep, and can slip into the most restrictive locations while transiting under b42-foot bridges without modifications.”

“Instead, they put the out-going Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen in charge, based on his performance after the Katrina storm disaster. Never send a flag officer to do the work of a salvage master. He was drinking the BP cool aid from the start.”

“The technology the Japanese will use is also good for a wide variety of hard mineral mining on the deep sea bed with relatively minor modifications.”

Like mining manganese nodules, for example. No, really mining them this time, not a cover for recovering Russian subs. Don’t think all theses new hydrocarbons will cause the price to plummet. It is the current high prices that make these advanced technology recoveries viable.”

“But the situation will stabilize, more and more of the “Free World” will have what they need in close proximity to where they are consumed.”

“We can discuss this more later, I’m in the middle of something for a client right now, in fact one drilling in the Arctic.”

Swimming in hydrocarbons, I thought. Will wonders never cease? If it is not methane, I guess plenty of natural gas and oil will have to do.

Copyright 2013 Vic and Boats
www.vicsocotra.com