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Maurer, Anadarko to drill 3 gas hydrate wells on North Slope
Kay Cashman PNA Publisher
The Dec. 30 edition of PNA carried a story on the first three gas hydrate wells to be drilled in the North American Arctic. This week, a group of international scientists is drilling the last of those wells on the coast of the Canadian Beaufort. (See Mallik wells in rig report, page 2.)
On Feb. 21, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. spokesman Mark Hanley told the House Special Committee on Oil and Gas that his company was part of a group planning to drill three gas hydrate wells on the North Slope in the 2002-2003 drilling season.
The 28-month project is funded in part by the Department of Energy, with $3.99 million expected to come from DOE and $3.37 from three private companies — Houston-based Maurer Technology Inc., the lead contractor, and its partners Noble Engineering and Development Ltd., both subsidiaries of Noble Drilling Corp., and Anadarko.
Anadarko is in charge of designing a portable lab for on-site core analysis and storage, Tom Williams, the Maurer employee who heads up the Alaska project, told PNA in early March. Anadarko is working with the University of Oklahoma, which has built remote labs for Amoco.
The lab will be dry tested in July and, if everything works as expected, moved to the North Slope in August or September. East of Tarn, south of Prudhoe The gas hydrate wells will be drilled on 100 percent Anadarko leases east of Tarn and south of Prudhoe Bay.
Permitting for the wells will get under way shortly, Williams said, with several well sites initially identified. By June, after it has completed its geological and seismic studies, the partners expect to have selected three specific drill sites.
Williams said the wells will likely be on separate Anadarko lease blocks because “the goal is to evaluate all Anadarko’s 100 percent leases in the area for gas hydrates.”
Although availing itself of Noble’s expertise, a Noble rig will not be used for the project because the company no longer owns any land based rigs.
“We’re looking for a rig now. The kind of rigs you use for gas hydrate wells, which are shallow — 1,500 to maybe 3,000 feet — are more like mining drilling rigs than conventional oil rigs,” Williams said. Many unanswered questions Methane hydrates consist of water and methane, or natural gas, combined in a frozen state. The technical challenges stem from the fact that the gas must be extracted from frozen matter.
“We have to chill the mud and … we’ll have a chiller on location for the drill bit and … special containers for the core. They can get too cold as well as too warm. A disassociation of hydrate from the rock can occur either way, so temperature is very important,” Williams said.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions that we can’t answer until we have drilled: Is there a whole bunch of hydrates in one place or layers of hydrates? What is the gas content? How much ice is involved? Will there be water production problems?”
In the second phase of the project Maurer will conduct an engineering study to determine the best way to safely and economically produce gas from Arctic hydrates.
Maurer expects to begin posting information about the project on its web page in April. Go to Maurertechnology.com
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