That is what they were mining on that Ice Road Truckers show.

Claire on November 13, 2008 at 4:32 PM

No it wasn’t.

The gold in them thar … crystals
We already know that Alaska has vast energy reserves of oil and natural
gas locked away in places that Congress dares not go — like the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, for instance. They also have a lot of….

In Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other areas, people without even a highschool education are converting vehicles to run on readily available CNG, and/or methane, and very little cost. The EPA has made it nearly impossible to make the conversions a reality here in the most modern country on earth, by omposing restrictions on the installation of such systems on vehicles, claiming some utter bullshit about how CNG can actually produce more damaging chemicles into the atmosphere, bla bla bla…bullshit to justify their own existance. This is clearly a case of Government for the sake of government, and it sucks. I have been send countless emails to my congressmen and senators to no avail, all I get is BS.
Current prices for the one gallon equivelant (gasoline) of CNG, range from 66 cents in some parts of the country, here in Indiana It’s about 1.00.
CNG also has the equivelant of 120 octane, so your vehicle will get better mileage, and go faster.(yes thats important to me)
So, what we need here is less government, a bunch of conversion kits, some tax incentives, burn down the EPA, and lets make some money on this idea….

Alaska, the land of plenty.

Governor of Alaska under the Democrats
Secretary of Energy under the Republicans

Not President

Romeo13 on November 13, 2008 at 12:03 PM

Hey leave the Al Gore clone alone.

He doesn’t know and I doubt he has asked.

But I do believe in Climate change (not the Al Gore edition) … people need to learn that climate changes. Wow, what a concept huh!

Instead of drilling for Natural Gas, you’re proposing strip mining.

Techie on November 13, 2008 at 10:29 AM

Environmental Scientist? Uninformed? Interesting choice of words when you don’t seem to understand HOW they are going to extract the gas.

Dilithium crystals?

Dan Collins on November 13, 2008 at 8:57 AM

Hee hee! I thought it myself.
Again, another potential resource about to be blocked from developing. But I think the times they are a changin’.
People are soon going to get real sick of sky rocketing energy prices.
Those DC latte sippers are gonna start wailing about it when their lattes go up to $10 a piece. Then we’ll get ‘er done.

Pressurization and tempurature controls are very tricky… to high.. you are going to have a blow out. To little and nothing but a bubble will come up and leak out.

The government has partnered with oil companies to develop extraction processes, but they have yet to test them.

Ed, wrong.

BLM and the State of Alaska have opened this up as a permited item and Unit and HAVE tried to go for Methane Hydrate or what is called Methane Clathrates.

Here is how it went.

1. They got a special drilling rig and converted it with a steam fitting … to melt the “permafrost” which holds the hudrate.
2. Figuring out HOW long they would be able to do this… via pressure and tempurature.
3. The resulting factors went into a special vacuum that helpo the gas.
4. Colder steam was injected back into the Formation to form ice crystals and POSSIBLY collect more Methane in the future (a type of reusable, we may never know) but to also stabalize the formation.

Methane in most colder States and areas of the world, you only have to drill to 3500 feet or less depending.

This was a scientific and starter type. But if it works… imagine the possibilities.

Now the next step is getting the Methane off the Sea Floor.

Wiki actually has a good site for this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

USGS is starting a “frontiering project”…
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
with DOE…
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/hydrates/index.html
and N.O.A.A.
fe.doe.gov/…/publications/methane_hydrates/mh_interagency_plan.pdf

I was very involved with this a while back. Enjoy the read… and please keep in mind that this is in the infancy stages. What to do next on via the receiving portion and how to harness it better in the future is the key.

The government has partnered with oil companies to develop extraction processes
This is key and illustrates a discontinuity in the liberal thought process – if there even is such a thing. If a transition to alternative energy sources is ever to be made, it will be accomplished largely by existing energy developers (aka Big Oil) because they have the know-how and also the capital for R&D. But when they are forced to bend over and take a profit spanking in the new Obamaland, they will have less capital and little incentive to invest further.

whitetop on November 13, 2008 at 9:46 AM

Whitetop, you beat me to it. This mentality is part of the problem. It is easy to be against big _______ (fill in the blank) oil, computers, fast food, etc. but is big oil and the private sector that will solve this problem.

Common sense would dictate that we increase our energy supply but the Dems long ago cast that aside in favor of eco-Marxism.

Europe currently has a huge problem with massive immigration of Muslims. The majority of Europeans want this immigration to stop but the Arab countries demand that Europe keep accepting their excess population in exchange for oil. The Europeans should be pressing the US ini expanding its drilling for oil, nat gas, and for coal gasification so the EU can tell the Muslims to get bent and keep their jihadis at home.

Our politicians are incapable of strategic thinking.

I’d like a grid that’s 75% nuclear, 15% Hydro, 10% Other (Geothermal, Solar, Wind, Tidal)

Their reactor is wa-away safe, about 1.5 meters in diameter and 3 meters high. It is buried for 8-10 years while it can power 20,000 houses (25 MWe) for about $25 million each. When it needs to be refueled, the module is replaced and the used on returned to the factory for processing.

This can power resource recovery in very remote locations for a fraction of the cost of natural gas.
Hyperion uses technology developed at Los Alamos National Lab for about 15 years, and is commercializing technology owned by US taxpayers.

Instead of drilling for Natural Gas, you’re proposing strip mining.

The process would be very inefficent, so most of the clathrates exposed/harvested would sublimate and go into the atmosphere. Now, I know that I’ll catch a lot of uninformed flack for raising climate change here (sadly, it’s been poisoned by politics), but consider this too. Acidification of the world’s oceans is a very real consequence of carbon output and it could be devestating to the global ecosystem.

I’m sure the Dems are right now coming up with a way to block any exploration or usage of this resource.

brak on November 13, 2008 at 8:41 AM

I’m sure they are too.

From what we know over the past several years to recently it seems that the United States hold the largest ever vast reserves of offshore methane hydrate. It is just unreal. We just ooze with these natural resources in oil, gas, and methane hydrate.Kokonut on November 13, 2008 at 9:46 AM

And yet there are some who still doubt that God loves the U.S.A. and wants us to be prosperous and spread The American Way around the globe.