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Another test of methane hydrates on the North Slope, a potential huge new gas resource, is being planned. State officials are in discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., or JOGMC on possible joint-sponsorship, and talks are planned with North Slope producers about potential sites for a test within one of the operating units on the Slope, Commissioner of Natural Resources Mark Myers said. A technical evaluation of different sites is now underway, Myers said. Drilling within an existing industry unit is preferable for cost reasons but sites on nearby unleased...

Some climate change proponents are saying the huge amounts of methane gas, stored under the Arctic ice is a potential "ticking time bomb." They claim that we must stop extracting fossil fuels that put more CO2 into our atmosphere or face disaster. Methane is only one of a number of gases called greenhouse gases (GHG) that can absorb and emit infrared radiation, or in other words, this means they can trap and absorb heat. The most abundant GHG is water vapor, followed by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFC's. By measuring atmospheric infrared radiation, climatologists are able to...

Shale has the spotlight for now. But there's another, lesser-known substance with the potential to yield even greater quantities of natural gas: methane hydrate. Hydrates consist of a lattice-like structure of frozen water molecules and methane. On the surface, they look like an ordinary block of ice. But when you hold a match to them, they burn—a visual cue signaling methane release. "A lot of geoscientists are fascinated by hydrates because of how odd it is that you can take methane gas and add water and have it result in something with such a concentrated store of energy," said Peter...

TOKYO — Japan said Tuesday that it had extracted gas from offshore deposits of methane hydrate — sometimes called “flammable ice” — a breakthrough that officials and experts said could be a step toward tapping a promising but still little-understood energy source. The gas, whose extraction from the undersea hydrate was thought to be a world first, could provide an alternative source of energy to known oil and gas reserves. That could be crucial especially for Japan, which is the world’s biggest importer of liquefied natural gas and is engaged in a public debate about whether to resume the country’s...

A changing Gulf Stream is warming deep waters along the eastern United States and destabilizing greenhouse gases trapped in sediments. Somewhere off the eastern coast of North Carolina, a frozen mixture of water and methane gas tucked in seabed sediments is starting to break down. Researchers blame a shifting Gulf Stream — the swift Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from the Gulf of Mexico — which is now delivering warmer waters to areas that had previously only experienced colder temperatures. “We know methane hydrates exist here and, if warming continues, it can potentially lead to less stable sediments 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...

The U.S. Department of Energy is no longer funding research into possible methane hydrate deposits in the Barrow gas fields on Alaska’s North Slope, Petroleum News has learned. As a consequence, a North Slope Borough research team involving Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska is no longer proceeding with phase two of the research. “We’re going ahead as a development project and just cutting out the (methane hydrate) science,” Tom Walsh, a managing partner of PRA, told Petroleum News Feb. 17. The team had planned to drill two methane hydrate test wells and four horizontal development wells in the gas fields but...

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...

Vast deposits of methane, trapped in icelike crystals under Alaska's frozen tundra and beneath ocean floors worldwide, could play an important role in the nation's energy future. But after more than two decades of study, major oil companies and governments are still trying to crack the code to large-scale extraction of these energy rich substances called gas hydrates. Wickrema Singhe, a Houston-based engineer and project consultant to some of the world's biggest oil companies, has wrestled with the same problem. And recently, he's developed a technology he believes could provide at least part of the answer. The technology involves using...

Recently the Heritage Foundation posted an article on cap and trade on their blog. In the article, they talk about the potential of natural gas supply. I left a comment there and thought the information might be useful for anyone considering the same question. My thoughts on the article appear below. Many people have heard conflicting numbers regarding the supply of natural gas in the United States. Most everyone who knows about U.S. natural gas supply would agree that the U.S. has abundant supplies of natural gas. So why the confusion? It’s because the natural gas industry uses different numbers,...

Natural gas locked up in water crystals could be a source of enormous amounts of energy – and if a new technology delivers what scientists are claiming, then it could even be emissions-free too. > The US Department of Energy is now working with the oil company ConocoPhillips on a field trial in Alaska (pdf), to test whether the technique can be scaled up. >

In March 2002, an international team of scientists pumped hot water down a 1,200-meter well located at the edge of the Mackenzie River Delta in northwestern Canada. The water seeped into the pores of the perpetually frozen sediments, melting icelike crystals along its path. These were no ordinary crystals, but frozen cages of water molecules filled with methane, the main constituent of natural gas. The structures had formed millennia ago and now reside in layers deep below the permafrost. As the crystals melted, the natural gas escaped and bubbled to the surface to fuel a flame rising high above the...

Palaeoceanographic data have been used to suggest that methane hydrates play a significant role in global climate change. The mechanism by which methane is released during periods of global warming is, however, poorly understood. In particular, the size and role of the free-gas zone below gas-hydrate provinces remain relatively unconstrained, largely because the base of the free-gas zone is not a phase boundary and has thus defied systematic description. Here we evaluate the possibility that the maximum thickness of an interconnected free-gas zone is mechanically regulated by valving caused by fault slip in overlying sediments. Our results suggest that a...