PANAJI
A team of scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO)-Goa has found an alternative source of hydrocarbon energy called methane hydrates in Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin. The importance of this discovery can be understood from the fact that this is the first time such gas hydrates have been found in Indian territorial waters.
Talking to media persons, Prof Sunil Singh, Director, NIO-Goa, said, “This is a great discovery as far as gas hydrates and cold seeps are concerned in India. Before this, India was not there on the map of cold seeps in the world. Though we were aware about the presence of gas hydrates in continental margin, for the first time, a technique was developed and we found active cold seeps. Methane gas was bubbling and coming upto the middle of water with depth of around 700 meters, which was not known to anyone.”
“Gas hydrates are going to be source of alternate energy. Petroleum reserves are limited. It is estimated that about 1,900 trillion cubic meters of gas hydrates are there are in Indian exclusive zone. Even if we tap 10% of that, we can take care of our energy requirements for the next 100 years. Moreover, gas hydrates are a cleaner energy resource compared to petroleum products,” he continued.
Methane gas hydrates are crystalline substances essentially composed of water and methane gas along other minor hydrocarbon gases. They form within the seabed at high pressure and low temperature conditions.
For a while now, scientists have known that reserves of gas hydrates exist in India, but they weren’t able to locate them. NIO-Goa recently developed a technique using modern tools like water column imaging, parasound sub-bottom profiler and high resolution seismic and precise seabed sampling protocol to locate cold seeps.
Dr Pawan Dewangan, scientist at NIO-Goa, who led the cruise, said, “We undertook the cruise to map where those active seeps are in KG basin. The cruise was successful and we were able to detect the environment, where these seeps exist. We were a team of 22 persons, including 5 scientists, on board a cruise for 25 days.”
Thanks to this discovery, India has joined the ranks of other countries like China, Japan and Korea, which have already made efforts in the field of gas-hydrates exploration.
