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The National Energy Technology Laboratory has published some new results from methane hydrate testing carried out in 2011 and 2012 in the Ignik Sikumi test well on Alaska’s North Slope. According to an article in the latest edition of NETL’s Fire in Ice publication, the results shed light on the potential use of injected carbon dioxide as a means of producing natural gas from methane hydrate deposits, while also demonstrating that producing gas by depressuring the deposits may work more easily than previously thought. Methane hydrate is a naturally occurring solid that traps concentrated volumes of methane, the primary component...

This month, scientists will test a new way to extract methane from beneath the frozen soil of Alaska: they will use waste carbon dioxide from conventional wells to force out the desired natural gas. The pilot experiment will explore the possibility of ‘mining’ from gas hydrates: cages of water ice that hold molecules of methane. Such hydrates exist under the sea floor and in sandstone deep beneath the Arctic tundra, holding potentially vast reserves of natural gas. But getting the gas out is tricky and expensive. The test is to be run by the US Department of Energy (DOE), in...

When methane and freezing cold water fuse under tremendous pressure, they create a substance as paradoxical as it coveted: burning ice. Earlier in the year, a report from the National Research Council identified the combustible water, also known as methane hydrate, as a potential source of natural gas. Now, according to the Chinese news organization Xinhau, China is joining the US, Japan, and South Korea in the hunt for this weird mineral. Icy Hot : courtesy of NASAAs explained in this comic, there's 85.4 trillion cubic feet of methane hydrate buried under Alaska. That's equivalent to 3 billion tons of...

SEOUL, June 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korean engineers have obtained chunks of gas hydrate in the East Sea and successfully separated gas from them, the government said Sunday, a move that may give the resources-scarce country a new source of energy. "The discovery is important because it shows for certain that a pool of gas hydrate is there," said Lee Seung-woo, head of an oil field development team in the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. Lee said the 2,000-ton South Korean oil drilling ship Tamhae 2 has recently found a pool of gas hydrate 100 kilometers south of Ulleung...