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Technical ‘breakthrough’ in hydrates turns heads C$25 million Mackenzie Delta test results spur talk of commercial pay-off Gary Park Petroleum News Calgary correspondent
The numbers are so big they scarcely have a name and the technology is so untried that commercial development could be decades away.
But a staggering energy source is one step closer to being developed now that a team of global researchers has proclaimed that producing natural gas from hydrate deposits is “technically feasible.” (See initial announcement in Dec. 14 issue of Petroleum News.)
Natural Resources Canada said in a news release that results of research wells on the Mackenzie Delta have established the potential to develop gas hydrate deposits as an environmentally friendly, sustainable fuel resource.
The C$25 million test of Imperial Oil’s Mallik gas lease on the Beaufort Sea, about 70 miles north of Inuvik, yielded a maximum extrapolated flow rate of about 53,000 cubic feet per day, although the results were constrained by the limited nature of the tests.
But the scientists were so pleased with the program that they released the results six months ahead of schedule.
Some calculations have placed the worldwide hydrate resource at 279,000,000 trillion cubic feet, or 55,000 times greater than proven conventional gas reserves.
The Mallik venture involved more than 100 scientists from Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany and India along with a gas producers’ group that included BP Canada Energy, Chevron Canada Resources and Burlington Resources Canada. Japanese aim for full-scale production by 2016 The Japanese were so encouraged by the results that they plan to spend US$100 million per year, aiming at full-scale production by 2016.
They expect to drill 21 offshore exploration wells in the Nankai Trough off Japan’s east coast. Drilling started in 1999 and a first production test is scheduled for 2007.
Japanese participants developed a special coring technique that allowed the Mallik program to recover more than 650 feet of high-quality hydrate-bearing cores.
As well, geophysical techniques developed specifically for Mallik were able to monitor changes in the hydrate reservoir as the gas was produced.
Jean-Serge Vincent, scientist emeritus with Natural Resources Canada, told reporters that the Mallik program is a “breakthrough ... (and) sets the stage for further research and development.”
He predicted that within 15 years Canada could see commercial hydrate production.
Others are less bullish. A spokeswoman for BP Canada said it could be at least two decades before there is any meaningful production from hydrate resources in the Arctic.
A couple of years ago, Timothy Collett, with the United States Geological Survey, suggested that significant production of hydrates to displace other gas is likely 30 to 50 years away.
The methane hydrates are contained in very hard, ice-like formations in deep-sea environments around the globe as well as beneath permafrost.
But because methane is 20 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — the main target of the Kyoto Protocol — there is concern among environmentalists about the potential to warm the planet from hydrate development.
Vincent said the Mallik experiments generated gas flows from three different methods — heating the hydrates, lowering pressures in the deposits and by injecting substances such as methanol.
He said the next phase is a “major, larger production test” stretching over several months.
Editor’s note: See breaking news on Mallik results, along with photos from the site, in Dec. 14 issue of Petroleum News.
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