[FlyVet]

Interesting. Never heard of methane hydrate before.

A few years back, I saw the CEO of BP interviewed on TV. He said the largest oil reserves in the world were right out there in the Gulf of Mexico. But, nobody wants to see an oil rig when they go to the beach. That, on top of fears of oil spills, and there it sits, untapped.

[alloysteel]

That is how gas wells are formed. The sediment that drifts down over these Methane Hydrate accumulations eventually solidifies into rock layers, and there is a strata of trapped methane. Methane, CH4, is the simplest unit of an organic compound that can exist. There is reason to believe that under sufficient heat and pressure, methane could form higher organic compounds, forming longer and longer carbon chains, but that leaves the problem of what happens to the excess hydrogen generated. If any nitrogen is present, it may be formed into ammonia, also found in gas wells. A lot of the chemistry in deep petroleum pockets is only poorly understood.