In the age of prolific and immediately-recoverable onshore gas resources, gas or methane hydrates — a resource for the future — may not be a fashionable topic. However, a successful proof-of-concept test on the Alaskan North Slope is a promising advance of gas hydrate technology.
A consortium comprising ConocoPhillips, National Energy Technology Laboratory, University of Bergen in Norway, and Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation have demonstrated the ability to recover methane by replacing it in hydrates with carbon dioxide. The single-well test focused on demonstrating the concept’s technical feasibility; further work is required for demonstrating commercial production and economic feasibility. Even so, this is a milestone towards exploiting a resource whose global estimates range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas.
