What you really do not want to dois actually melt the water. CO2displacement is a good idea and combining that with some reduction in pressureand extensive reservoir fracturing with propane perhaps and we may develop aneat and efficient recovery system
Fracking with brine should alsogenerate a great deal of gas.
The truth of it all is that weneed to see a number of experiments funded and undertaken. The same thing happened in the tarsands andit took many emergent technologies to slowly master the resource. We are likely to see the same thing happenhere and it is early days for this monumental resource.
Methane has the advantage of beena nice cheap way to heat a house and may well sustain a market even with thenew reactors coming out that will bring electrical power way down in price.
On the other hand I am verynervous about the future of the hydrocarbon industry because of the pendingchange in the global energy equation.
Newly Installed Alaska NorthSlope WellWill Test Hydrate Production Tech
by Staff Writers
A fully instrumented well that will test innovative technologies for producing methane gasfrom hydrate deposits has been safely installed on the North Slope ofAlaska. As a result, the "Ignik Sikumi" (Inupiaq for "fire inthe ice") gashydrate fieldtrial well will be available for field experiments as early as winter 2011-12.
The well, the result of a partnership between ConocoPhillips and theOffice of Fossil Energy's (FE) National Energy Technology Laboratory, willtest a technology that involves injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into sandstonereservoirs containing methane hydrate.
Laboratory studies indicate that the CO2 molecules will replace themethane molecules within the solid hydrate lattice, resulting in thesimultaneous sequestration of CO2 in a solid hydrate structure and productionof methane gas.
Methane hydrate consists of molecules of natural gas trappedin an open rigid framework of water molecules. It occurs in sediments withinand below thick permafrost in Arctic regions, and in the subsurface of mostcontinental waters with a depth of ~1,500 feet or greater.
Many experts believe it represents a potentially vast source of globalenergy and FE scientists have studied methane hydrate resource potentialand production technologies for more than two decades. Researchers areaddressing such important issues as seafloor stability, drilling safety, and arange of environmental issues, including gas hydrate's role in changingclimates.
The recently completed operations include the acquisition of aresearch-level suite of measurements through the sub-permafrost hydrate-bearingsediments. The data confirm the occurrence of 160 feet of gas-hydrate-bearingsand reservoirs in four separate zones, as predicted, and provide insight intotheir physical and mechanical properties.
An array of down-hole pressure-temperature gauges were installed in thewell, as well as a continuous fiber-optic temperature sensor outside the wellcasing, which will monitor the well as it returns to natural conditionsfollowing the drilling program.
In coming months, field trial participants will review the data todetermine the optimal parameters for future field testing. Current plans are tore-enter the well in a future winter drilling season, and conduct a 1-2 monthprogram of CO2 injection and well production to assess the efficiency of theexchange process.
Following those tests, the remaining time available before the springthaw (as much as 40 days) may be used to test reservoir response to pressurereduction in the wellbore.
This alternativemethane-production method, "depressurization," recently provedeffective during short-term testing conducted by the governments of Japan and Canada at a site in northwestern Canada
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