| Summary: | SUGAR (SUbmarine GAs hydrate Reservoirs) is a collaborative R&D project with 20 partners from SMEs, industry and research institutions. It was launched in 2008 and is now successfully continuing in its second phase, running until summer 2014. The portfolio of technologies developed in SUGAR includes state-of-the-art hydro-acoustic, 3-D seismic and electromagnetic devices for the exploration of marine gas hydrate deposits as well as the monitoring of hydrate exploitation operations. The novel joint inversion technique combines the interpretation of seismic and electromagnetic data and was successfully applied to hydrate accumulations off New Zealand and in the Black Sea. New autoclave systems for drilling and recovering marine hydrates under in situ pressure have been designed that are suitable for deployments from both drilling vessels and small research vessels. A further outcome of the project is a unique 3-D basin modeling software for the prediction of the formation of gas hydrate deposits in marine and permafrost settings. Exploitation strategies for marine hydrate deposits are being developed in laboratory experiments as well as in numerical reservoir simulations. Their primary focus is on the production of methane by injection of CO2, combining natural gas recovery with the safe sequestration of carbon dioxide in CO2 hydrates below the seafloor. While the reservoir simulations test field-scale strategies and assess these in terms of gas production rates and economics, the laboratory experiments focus on the optimization of the hydrate conversion reaction by application of supercritical CO2, heat supply via in situ combustion and addition of polymers. In the 2nd SUGAR phase, a new subproject started developing novel drilling technologies specialized for marine hydrate deposits which are significantly shallower below the seafloor than standard oil and gas reservoirs.
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