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Vol. 23, No 49 Week of December 09, 2018
Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry

Purpose of North Slope methane hydrate well is long-term testing

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Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that a new methane hydrate test well being drilled on the North Slope will be fitted with temperature and acoustic monitoring devices to support potential long-term field experiments. The idea is to build on previous methane hydrate research conducted in the United States, Canada and Japan. The new well is designed to address the next critical step in this research: conducting field experiments of sufficient duration to determine how the depressurization of a methane hydrate reservoir can release natural gas from the hydrate, DOE says.

Drilled from existing pad

As previously reported in Petroleum News, BP is drilling the new test well from a small, existing gravel pad, adjacent the North Slope Spine Road, about one mile north of Z pad, in the western part of the Prudhoe Bay unit. The plan is to start drilling the well in December, with a view to completing the well and demobilizing the drilling rig by mid-January. Part of the drilling project will involve the collection of downhole samples, to confirm the presence of hydrates at the well location.

DOE says that its National Energy Technology Laboratory is funding the drilling phase of the project and that NETL, the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., the U.S. Geological Survey and Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska are all providing technical expertise in support of the project planning and execution. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources has also been facilitating methane hydrate evaluation in Alaska, DOE says.

Methane hydrate is a solid in which molecules of methane, the primary component of natural gas, are concentrated inside a lattice of water molecules. Huge quantities of the material, which remains stable within a certain range of relatively high pressures and low temperatures, are known to exist around the base of the permafrost under the North Slope. There are also extensive hydrate accumulations in other parts of the world, including in the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Japan.

Possible gas source

There is the possibility of using methane hydrate deposits as a major source of natural gas - the gas can potentially be released through some combination of depressurizing or heating the hydrate material. However, although short-term hydrate production tests have been conducted, no one has yet demonstrated long-term, sustained production. Moreover, there are questions over whether the production of gas from hydrates would be economically viable and competitive with conventional gas production. Gas production through depressurization of the hydrates, as gas is drawn off, would presumably be cheaper than production through the application of heat.

DOE says that the site of the new North Slope methane hydrate well has the potential to enable the conducting of experiments over many months, especially given the convenient location of the well site for year-round access.

“This test will move us closer to understanding gas hydrates, which have the potential to provide an enormous new energy source,” said Steven Winberg, DOE assistant secretary for fossil energy. “We look forward to working with our partners on this important project.”

- ALAN BAILEY



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