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The National Methane Hydrates R&D Program
Program Goals
Drilling Rig in Alaska
Photo courtesy
Tom |
The primary goal of the National Methane Hydrate R&D Program is to provide the knowledge and technologies to fully realize the potential of methane hydrates in supporting our nation's continued economic growth, energy security, and environmental protection. The program will achieve this goal by focusing on four key issues:
- Understanding the role hydrates play in global processes such as climate and the carbon cycle.
- Investigating the impact of hydrates on seafloor stability and deep-sea life.
- Developing the tools and knowledge that will ensure the safety of drilling and producing deep-water oil and gas resources located below marine hydrate deposits.
- Developing the knowledge and technology base to allow commercial production of methane from domestic hydrate deposits by the year 2015.
Clearly, a successful National Methane Hydrate R&D Program will have enormous long-term public interest benefits, including enhanced environmental protection, increased energy security, and a sound foundation of knowledge about a previously poorly-known natural phenomena. To ensure we stay on track, the program has defined specific intermediate goals for the near-term, mid-term, and long-term.
Near-Term (by 2010)
- Determine if methane hydrate occurs in nature in accumulations of sufficient quantity and quality to eventually provide 10% of the nation’s gas supply.
- Ground-truth hydrate exploration technologies developed in the Arctic, and conduct long-term production testing on a well-characterized Arctic hydrate reservoir.
- Conduct geophysical and drilling-based studies to determine 1) the extent of reservoir-quality sandstones in the deep marine environment, 2) the potential for those reservoirs to house significant quantities of hydrate.
- Conduct field and laboratory studies to determine 1) the fundamental physical properties (flow capacity, mechanical strength, thermal conductivity, and others) of methane hydrate bearing sediments at different levels of hydrate saturation, and 2) how those physical properties might change during either intentional or natural hydrate dissociation.
- Further probe the relationship between natural methane hydrates, the global carbon cycle and climate, through establishment of a permanent sea-floor observatory in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico
- Support the continue refinement of assessments of the distribution and volume of methane hydrates, including the initial estimates of technically- and economically-recoverable resources under foreseeable future scenarios.
- Assimilate data obtained thus far to provide practical means to avoid or mitigate the potential hazards of overlying hydrate deposits to conventional oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Develop improved seismic and other geophysical tools for direct detection and characterization of hydrates in deep marine settings.
- Provide these and other databases on a variety of methane hydrate topics through world-wide-web sites (such as CODATA) for use by the entire methane hydrate R&D community.
Long-Term (by 2015)
- Enable the initial commercial production of methane from hydrates.
- Allow the continued safe production oil and gas from deep-water deposits overlain by hydrates.
- Provide a comprehensive knowledge base and suite of analytical tools to support ongoing research into natural methane hydrates and their role in the global environment.
- Secure the U.S. as a global leader in the science of natural gas hydrates and the technology of hydrate production.
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