Financial journalists and mining seem not to go together.
To remove the gas from the coal beds, pressure at the wellhead is reduced and the gas “floats off” from being attached to the methane.
Err, no, the gas is the methane.
However, the larger story is interesting. As well as the unconventional shale gas that has so revolutionised the US gas market there\’s coal bed methane (CBM) which can also be exploited Ooop North.
The long-abandoned coal seams that stretch from the Pennines to the Irish Sea are also rich in methane gas and this could be tapped to produce electricity for the national grid.
This should, of course, please greenies everywhere. We get more energy security, lower carbon emissions, jobs are created….everything that they say they desire from an energy system.
“CBM is not uniform and it takes some time to ‘crack the code’ of any particular deposit,” Mr Lough says. “As far as the industry goes, we are in the foothills, Mr Lough says. “However, the UK is the most heavily-traded gas market in the world and any indigenous gas is interesting and valuable.”
My word, will you look at that. Precisely because we have a large, liquid and vibrant market in natural gas this is one of the best places to try and exploit such deposits. Isn\’t is just amaaazing what markets can do for us?
It massively reduces the risks, if there is a free market for the product, and it means you don’t have to sell the stuff before you even drill (which screws your bargaining power).
All this unconventional gas stuff is going to have a massive impact on global energy. The environmentalist will hate it, but once again technology has provided a partial solution that puts off the hair shirts for a few more years.
There are massive CBM projects on the verge of being signed off in Queensland, which would dwarf anything the UK could come up with. Gladstone LNG is the biggest, and there’s a good chance I’ll end up on that in a year or so.
LNG is the future (says the chap who has LNG on his CV now).
“The long-abandoned coal seams that stretch from the Pennines to the Irish Sea”: why just those ones?