Can you ever
imagine that an oil-based industry can some day easily be replaced by a natural-gas-based
one?
 In an article in the Sunday Times, Norman
Miller has stated that the conditions responsible for the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
( which lies between the West Indies islands and the south-eastern coast of USA could
provide the answer to the world’s energy crisis. The energy source is methane gas and
there are no alien spaceships or suburbs of Atlantis here. The myth of the Bermuda
Triangle, the mysterious disappearances and strange events, has generated much interest
all over the world through the years. Charles Berlitz’s book on the subject,
published in 1974, sold nearly 20 million copies in 30 languages. Ships, boats, and even
aeroplanes are all said to have disappeared in this area and all the mystery has been
attributed to extraterrestrials. But scientists now have an explanation for these
phenomena and the cause is not extraterrestrial but chemical. It goes by the name of
methane gas hydrate, which is methane (created by decomposing organic debris) that has
been entombed in an ice crystalline. Conditions are ideal for the formation of this gas in
areas of permafrost. Another area is the deep sea floor where the pressure and the
temperature are right for the creation of this gas.
It was only in 1981 that a geochemist, Richard McIver, went public
on a link between methane gas blowouts and the Bermuda Triangle myth. He stated that
massive landslides often occur along the North American continental shelf, which lies to
the north of the Bermuda Triangle. Such land slumps can occur over a large area bringing
down huge boulders which rupture the layer of gas hydrate beneath the sea floor, freeing
the gas that is trapped beneath the hydrate ‘cap’ and also liberating huge
amounts of methane trapped within the hydrate itself. The moment a methane gas pocket
ruptures a vast reservoir of gas suddenly surges from the seabed, rising up in a huge
plume before erupting on the surface within seconds and without warning. A ship caught in
such a blowout would be doomed; the water beneath it would suddenly become much less
dense, sinking it in a matter of moments. The vessel would plunge into the depths, where
it would be covered as sediment disturbed by the blow out settles back on the sea floor.
In fact, planes too could fall prey to such a deadly fallout.
The US geological Survey has estimated that just two small areas
off the coasts of North and South Carolina, which are a part of the Bermuda Triangle,
contain about 70 times the quantity of gas consumed annually in USA. The sea bed and the
areas of permafrost are therefore storehouses of a great energy source. It has been
estimated that just 1% of gas hydrate is equivalent to half the present conventional gas
reserves. But the bad news is that methane is a greenhouse gas and it is vulnerable to
blowouts when drillings go wrong. It is only stable under narrow temperature and pressure
conditions and would decay due to global warming. We will have to wait and see whether it
gives us energy to burn or it burns us up instead!
For more information
on the Bermuda Triangle link to
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