Economic Analysis and Feasibility Study of Gas Production from Alaska North Slope Gas Hydrate Resources,” AAPG Hedberg Conference

• Main Authors: S. J. Howe, N. R. Nanchary, S. L. Patil, D. O. Ogbe, G. A. Chukwu, R. B. Hunter, S. J. Wilson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Alaska North Slope; Methane hydrate; north slope; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.430.4418; http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2004hedberg_vancouver/extended/howe/images/howe.pdf

Gas hydrates are solid, crystalline compounds formed from water and gases under specific temperature and pressure conditions. A notable feature of hydrates is that a volume of hydrate containing a certain amount of gas molecules is considerably smaller than the same molecular quantity of free gas. Methane hydrate deposits occur in the subsurface of many permafrost areas as well as in oceanic sediments. Interest in gas hydrates as an energy resource arises from the large volumes that reputedly exist in these locations. Globally, an estimate of in-place gas hydrate is 100,000 to 3 x 10 9 trillion cubic feet (Collett, 2001). On the Alaska North Slope (ANS), probabilistic estimates indicate approximately 590 trillion cubic feet of gas in place within gas hydrates (Collett, 1997). If these resources can be recovered and transported economically, they may represent a significant energy resource. However, significant practical and economic challenges remain. Currently, most work is based in the laboratory. However, if the early phases of the research indicate that production of gas from hydrates may be feasible, future ANS project phases could include further data acquisition and production testing. An off-the-shelf simulator was modified to model gas dissociation from gas hydrates due to depressurization. The objective of this work