NT Reporter
Panaji
India is banking on the development of gas hydrate extraction technology to reduce its dependence on oil and gas imports, said Dr Pawan Devangan, Senior Principal Scientist at the CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (NIO).
India currently imports around 85 per cent of its oil and gas needs. However, vast gas hydrate deposits discovered in 2006 in the Krishna-Godavari basin, Mahanadi basin, and the Andaman region—estimated at 1,894 trillion cubic metres—could become a game-changer if extraction becomes viable.
“Right now, this technology to extract gas hydrate is not available. Everyone is testing different methods to produce gas and
dissociate it, but none has been commercially proven. NIO is trying to develop this technology,” said Devangan.
He explained that gas hydrates are crystalline solids in which gas molecules, primarily methane, are trapped within a cage of water molecules. When dissociated at room temperature and pressure, one cubic metre of gas hydrate can release 164 cubic metres of methane gas.
These deposits occur beyond depths of 700 metres, where high pressure and low temperature allow them to remain stable.
Devangan said that while they offer tremendous energy potential, gas hydrates can also pose geohazards such as submarine landslides and tsunamis if destabilised.
He was speaking at a media workshop on ‘Insights from Biological and Geological Oceanography’ held on Thursday.
CSIR-NIO began researching gas hydrates in 1997 and confirmed their presence through drilling in 2006. The institute now conducts repeat mapping every two years to monitor the stability and extent of the deposits.
Devangan also spoke about India’s marine mineral wealth, especially heavy mineral placers found along the coastlines and polymetallic nodules in deep-sea areas.
“India has exclusive
rights over 75,000 sqkm of deep-sea area containing more than 100 million metric tonnes of metals. Resource estimation has been completed in a first-generation mine site covering 18,500 sqkms,” he said.
On recent seismic activity, he attributed it to tectonic plate interactions, with the Indian plate colliding with and subducting beneath the southeast Asian plate—processes responsible for the rise of the Himalayas and frequent earthquakes.
Devangan said that unique chemosynthetic organisms living near gas hydrate seeps could offer valuable biomolecules with potential societal applications, as they survive not on sunlight but on chemicals like hydrogen sulfide released from the seafloor.
