Canada home to giant source of methane

Calgary Herald ^ | Feb 4, 2010 | Randy Boswell

[thackney]

A landmark U.S. study that examines the "potentially enormous" global storehouse of methane hydrate -- an icebound form of natural gas found largely in Arctic perma frost and seabed deposits -- has highlighted a Canadian site as one of the world's most important sources of the powerful but elusive fuel.

The report, released this week by the U.S. National Research Council, summarizes the promising research conducted over the past three years at the Mallik methane hydrate site in the Mackenzie Delta near Inuvik, N.W.T., about 1,200 kilometres north of Whitehorse.

While the full results of the experimental tapping of the Mallik resource "remain confidential at this time," the report states, extraction efforts "demonstrated sustained methane production" and generated "continuous gas flow" during tests, with "rates generally ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 cubic metres per day."

The Mackenzie Delta site, which has been extensively studied by the report's Canadian co-author, Scott Dallimore, a B.C.-based researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada, is now described as "the best-evaluated methane hydrate deposit in the world."

Interest in exploiting the frozen hydrocarbon has been stoked in recent years by soaring oil prices and forecasts of dwindling supplies of conventional petroleum resources.

Some estimates peg the global resource of methane hydrate at as much as 10 times the known supply of recoverable, conventional natural gas. The record retreat of Arctic sea ice over the past few summers has also turned attention toward northern oil and gas resources and the looming possibility of year-round navigation through polar waters formerly blocked by impenetrable, multi-year ice.

"The existence of such a large and as-yet untapped methane hydrate resource has provided a strong global-research incentive to determine how methane from methane hydrate might be produced as a technically safe, environmentally compatible, and economically competitive energy resource," states the U.S. report.

"Although the scientific, engineering, and environmental questions associated with exploration and potential commercial production of methane from methane hydrate are challenging," the study acknowledges, "research programs around the world, including (in) the United States, have made recent, substantial progress in understanding the behaviour and extent of the resource, and in performing drilling and production tests to extract methane from it."

Japan and South Korea are at forefront of methane-hydrate research, and a Japanese energy firm has been a key player in the tests being performed at the Mallik site.

Scientists around the world are still trying to develop reliable, sustainable and cost-e ffective methods of capturing the methane gas once it's unlocked from its icy medium. Unless the released methane is carefully contained to be used as fuel, it can escape into the atmosphere and create a greenhouse effect 20 times more powerful than similar amounts of carbon dioxide.

In 2008, following a successful round of experiments at the Mallik test site, Dallimore told The Northern News Service that exploiting the potential resource won't be possible until researchers fully address "environmental issues, including the processes controlling methane release in the natural environment."

Still, the U.S. report states that methane "has emerged as a central piece in planning and implementing the nation's transition to a future with cleaner, more efficient energy use."

Last January, just before leaving office, former U.S. president George W. Bush issued a sweeping White House directive on Arctic issues that highlighted the potential importance of methane hydrate as a future energy source for the country.

"Defining with certainty the area of the Arctic seabed and subsoil in which the United States may exercise its sovereign rights over natural resources such as oil, natural gas, methane hydrates, minerals and living marine species is critical to our national interests in energy security, resource management, and environmental protection," the directive stated.

[thackney]

We have more than enough methane gas in Wyoming to keep the US supplied for years, but the market is so low they quit gathering it.

I cannot imagine where you heard they quit producing Natural Gas in Wyoming. Far from true.

Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals and Production from Wyoming
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_prod_sum_dcu_swy_m.htm

I was part of the 2003 expansion for this Natural Gas pipeline expansion that started in Wyoming.

Kern River Gas Pipeline
http://www.kernrivergas.com/InternetPortal/DesktopModules/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=553

[Buckeye McFrog]

let the thread of Neil Young jokes commence...

[thackney]

There are quite a few active Natural Gas Pipelines in Wyoming. Take a look at the dayly flows at:

http://www.wyopipeline.com/Export_import.htm

[theBuckwheat]

Yet more proof we are awash in hydrocarbons. Since methane can be converted (or “refined”) into any other hydrocarbon such as gasoline, the only issue is what the cost of the final product will be. Thus, any concern over “peak oil”, “sustainability” or any other liberal fretting is pure sophistry.

To the extent that people are in denial of these facts and advocates policies based on that denial, we endanger our liberty and prosperity. An example of this is to pretend that wind power (aka bird blenders) is somehow economically rational when all costs are taken into account, or that we must drive tiny cars that have much higher death rate.

Leftists are so much in denial that they even insist that we must use light bulbs that contain mercury when we clearly prefer other types of bulbs. But wait. The day will soon come, as surely as the run rises in the east, that leftists will scold us for using those dangerous bulbs and insist they knew about the health hazard all along.

[dfwgator]

Must be all the “Kroff” Dinners and Timbits.