Posted on 02/20/2007 7:03:40 AM PST by thackney
BP teamed with government agencies to drill an exploratory well this month that could help unlock a fabulous new supply of North Slope natural gas.
The well probed a layer of material just beneath the permafrost, called gas hydrate. The hydrate is a solid, crystalline form of gas, usually methane, mixed in sandstone and water. A combination of cold and pressure keeps the gas as a solid.
Hydrates exist in many locations around the world, including under seabeds. On the North Slope, government geologists estimate there are 450 trillion cubic feet of gas hydrate. That's a staggering volume -- more than 12 times the amount of conventional gas known to exist within Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope oil fields.
For now, however, the hydrate is little more than tantalizing. The industry and government scientists say they first must figure out how to get the frozen gas to the surface, and it's likely to be several more years at least before any is produced commercially.
A test well just completed in BP's Milne Point field, northwest of Prudhoe, yielded much new information that could help lead to commercial production someday, BP and federal geologists and engineers said Monday in Anchorage.
The team drilled a well 3,000 feet deep on a prospect called Mount Elbert, named for the highest peak in Colorado, where one government hydrate expert, Tim Collett of the U.S. Geological Survey, hails from.
The purpose of the well was to run certain tests and to bring hydrate core samples to the surface -- something that's rarely been done anywhere in the world.
A hydrate sample looks like a hunk of sandstone laced with white swirls. Drop it into a bucket of water and it bubbles.
Collett and other scientists were excited by the results from the test well.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Some estimates have put the volume of natural gas in methane hydrates in Northern Alaska at over 500 tcf.
http://www.petroleumnews.com/products/FearFactor2005.pdf
see "Gas Hydrates" in Chapter 1
It's about time. They've known about this stuff for ages. One reason why it hasn't been tapped is because of the enviro wienies and drilling bans in those areas.
-ping--
You cannot persuade me that all this comes from the compressed bodies of little prehistoric creatures.
Sediment from 100's of millions of years of organics adds up after a while.
I'll gladly trade a few seals and a heard of Caribou for steady supply of natural gas.
Good thing Hillary is going to rip the profits out of the hands of big oil-wouldn't want that money to get spent on ways to develop additional sources of fossil fuel now would we.
Someone needs to tell her highness that BP is one of the largest suppliers of PV systems in the world.
Indeed. And just how does a little creature travel on a cubic foot and how many toes would it have?
More Hydrates information
http://www.mms.gov/offshore/MMShydrateLinks.htm
http://www.mms.gov/offshore/OtherAgencyHydrateLinks.htm
You cannot persuade me that all this comes from the compressed bodies of little prehistoric creatures............
It doesn't. It comes from vegetation, mostly aquatic vegetation. Eons of it
I have herd about those Caribou heards.
yeah, sometimes I just don't give a damn.
Why do you believe it would be done differently than the extraction of oil?
From what I've read recently, oil and gas are probably formed by both the compacting of organic material on the surface of the earth and natural chemical reactions in the Earth's crust. I have read accounts of some depleted wells in the Gulf of Mexico replenishing themselves over time from the bottom up. I would really like to see some more research on this phenomenon.
I would expect we would bring in sea water to replace the volume just as we do for the oil today.
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