The National Methane Hydrates R&D Program
Program Drivers
The growing recognition that natural methane hydrate exists at a massive scale presents numerous public interest issues that  require immediate and focused investigation. First, we need to find ways to mitigate the potential hazards that natural hydrate poses to ongoing deep-water oil and gas drilling and production. Second, we need to know if hydrate can be part of the solution for the nation's long-term energy security. Third, because we now know that ongoing natural events result in the continual, and sometimes massive, release of methane from hydrate, we need to re-evaluate our current understanding of processes such as global climate and the evolution of the sea floor so that future policies may be based on sound scientific information.
Right now, natural methane hydrates pose an increasing hazard to the workers and equipment delivering the nation's domestic oil and gas supply. Over the next two decades, the nation will derive an increasing share of its energy supply from deep-water oil and gas reservoirs. These operations require drilling through areas of probable hydrate occurrence. Incidental dissociation of near-surface hydrates caused by drilling and production operations may possibly lead to seafloor and well bore instability that poses significant safety issues. Therefore, technologies to locate and either avoid or mitigate potential problem areas will be critically important.
There is presently a consensus among energy researchers that current supplies of natural gas should be sufficient to support rapidly growing demand for at least the next two decades. Beyond 2020, however, a shortfall in economically recoverable natural gas is a real possibility. Improved access to and recovery of our current suite of resources is clearly needed. However, it is widely accepted that in order to provide sustainable, long-term supplies, some new source of natural gas must be brought on line. That new source may be natural methane hydrate
Before 1980, hydrate was considered by most to be an inconsequential part of the natural environment. By the mid-1990s, scientists began to suspect that hydrate may contain more organic carbon that all existing fossil fuel resources combined. As a result, hydrate science is still relatively young, and much needs to be learned concerning the role methane hydrate plays in natural processes. It is increasingly documented that methane hydrate are not stagnant deposits; instead they continually absorb and release methane gas as they equilibrate to natural cycles (at various time scales) in pressure, temperature and geochemical regimes. This vast, dynamic, and previously unnoticed methane storehouse raises important questions about the adequacy of our current understanding of the global carbon cycle, long-term climate, seafloor stability, deep ocean life, and other natural phenomena.
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