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Milestone reached in hydrate research Geological Survey of Canada publishes results; researchers believe gas hydrates could extend life of Mackenzie Valley gas line Gary Park Petroleum News Canadian Contributing Writer
In completing a gas hydrate research program in the Canadian Arctic, researchers claim to have established for the first time that production from hydrates is technically possible.
They now suggest the hydrates could in time extend the life of the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline.
More than three years after a joint C$17 million international research effort in the Mackenzie Delta, the Geological Survey of Canada has published what is rated the most comprehensive field data yet into a resource that has been estimated at 32,000 trillion cubic feet in Alaska alone but researchers say is decades from commercial production.
The Canadian program was conducted during the 2001-02 winter at the Imperial Oil Mallik L-38 discovery well drilled 33 years ago on the edge of the Beaufort Sea.
It included two observation wells and one production well, which recovered gas hydrates from an interval between about 2,900 and 3,800 feet. Scotian Shelf work next step The next steps in the research have involved geophysical experiments on the Scotian Shelf in Atlantic Canada.
In addition, Natural Resources Canada, in association with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, will soon embark on scientific drilling, geological and geophysical experiments offshore Vancouver Island.
The Geological Survey of Canada study authors suggest it is “advantageous” to discover gas hydrate deposits in association with conventional resources as work progresses on the Mackenzie Gas Project.
“If commercial gas hydrate production could be realized, it is possible that production could augment the lifespan of conventional (Mackenzie) gas fields,” they said.
A survey study this year projected that 52 onshore and offshore petroleum fields in the Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin hold 254.67 billion cubic meters of conventional gas.
It said gas hydrate presence has been inferred in about 20 percent of several hundred exploration wells in the region and represents an estimated 2.4 trillion cubic meters of gas in place. Study authors caution: ‘many unanswered questions’ But the study co-authors, Scott Dallimore of the Geological Survey of Canada and Timothy Collett of the United States Geological Survey, caution that there are “many unanswered questions” relating to gas hydrates.
They said further “long-term production testing is clearly needed to provide a more comprehensive data set for modeling and to address the uncertainties related to the short-term production tests.”
Developing a new resource will need a detailed understanding of the science and engineering related to production along with an improved “understanding of the geologic occurrence of gas hydrates, their physical properties and how best to explore for them.”
As well as the two geological surveys, participants in the Mallik program included the Japan National Oil Co., the U.S. Department of Energy, the German scientific research firm GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and a joint venture by BP, Chevron Canada Resources and Burlington Resources.
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