Natural Gas

It’s the stuff of dreams that could have speculators drooling at the possibility and engineers drooling at the challenge.

Imagine a world where liquid hydrocarbons including ethane and methane form a giant lake complete with a beach. You don’t really have to imagine very hard — it’s the moon Titan in orbit around Saturn.

NASA scientists have confirmed what many people have been speculating for a long time — the presence of natural gas in abundance on another world in the Solar System. The discovery was made possible by the U.S.-European Cassini spacecraft, an unmanned probe that has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004.

“This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface filled with liquid,” says Bob Brown, a scientist from the University of Arizona and a team leader in the Cassini program.

NASA said large dark spots had been seen on Titan’s surface before, but it was never possible to tell whether it was a solid or liquid. The Cassini probe has laid that question to rest.

Named Ontario Lacus, the lake is in Titan’s south polar region and is roughly 7,800 square miles, or slightly larger than Lake Ontario — it’s earthbound namesake.

For a world thirsty for energy, Titan is a dream that is so close and yet so far away — 2.2 billion miles to be exact.

“Detection of liquid ethane confirms a long-held idea that lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane exist of Titan,” says Larry Soderblum, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. He has said that Cassini might find other lakes and pools of liquid hydrocarbons as it continues its lonely orbit through the Saturn system of moons and tiny worlds.

In the Maltese Falcon, Detective Tom Polhaus picks up the Black Bird and looking at Humphrey Bogart (playing Sam Spade) says, “Heavy. What is it?”

Bogart replies, “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.”

Kind of like Titan.

–John A. Sullivan, News Editor, Oil and Gas Investor, www.OilandGasInvestor.com, jsullivan@hartenergy.com

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