Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

programme off Nankeen, Japan, and that there is also land based extraction of
methane from a plant that was established in the 1970s in Russia. Noting that
there is a form of demonstration technology available for extracting this
material, Dr. Parson expressed doubts that this technology would be adapted
from land to significant depths of water.
With a map, Dr. Parson showed participants sites where gas hydrates
have been sampled and analysed. Some of the sites that he identified were in
areas of the extended continental shelf. He pointed out some sites where he
said there is sufficient sediment, an appropriate water column structure and
that are unaffected by anomalous heat flow. He said that using a combination
of these parameters; they have made comments on the potential for hydrates
at some of these sites. He said that these sites could be used to identify areas
in the next phase of the exploration. In this regard, Dr. Parson said that the
countries that could benefit from development of hydrate potential on the
extended continental shelves are Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States,
Namibia and Australia. He described this list of countries as being the most
comprehensive based on the present day understanding and knowledge of
hydrates. He described the gas hydrate potential as a marginal resource. He
also said that for coastal states interested in claiming an extended continental
shelf, this is one of the resources that might justify their efforts.
With regard to offshore hydrocarbons, Dr. Parson said that because
the price of oil and gas allows the resources to be marketable from production
in fairly extreme conditions, it is pushing the industry deeper and deeper into
the ocean basins. While noting that there are still very significant deposits that
are being exploited on land, he said since the late 1990s the top ten offshore
hydrocarbon provinces are producing something like 25 percent of the
world’s consumption. He also said that the conditions for the occurrence of
offshore hydrocarbons are sufficient sediment accumulation, somewhere
between 1 and 2 kilometres or more, the right maturation process,
temperature and pressure, and the required overburden. He said however
that for the purposes of prediction, the best parameter to use is sediment
thickness.
Referring to Table 10 of his paper, Dr. Parson said that it was
developed using published data from the geophysical data centre in
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 758