Gas-hydrate tests to begin in Alaska

Nature ^ | 13 January 2012 | Nicola Jones

[thackney]

This month, scientists will test a new way to extract methane from beneath the frozen soil of Alaska: they will use waste carbon dioxide from conventional wells to force out the desired natural gas.

The pilot experiment will explore the possibility of ‘mining’ from gas hydrates: cages of water ice that hold molecules of methane. Such hydrates exist under the sea floor and in sandstone deep beneath the Arctic tundra, holding potentially vast reserves of natural gas. But getting the gas out is tricky and expensive.

The test is to be run by the US Department of Energy (DOE), in conjunction with ConocoPhillips, an oil company based in Houston, Texas, and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation. The researchers will pump CO2 down a well in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, into a hydrate deposit. If all goes as planned, the CO2 molecules will exchange with the methane in the hydrates, leaving the water crystals intact and freeing the methane to flow up the well.

Conventional wells in the Prudhoe Bay gas fields contain a very high concentration of carbon dioxide — about 12% of the gas. “You have to find something to do with it,” says Ray Boswell, technology manager for methane hydrates at the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia. One way to dispose of it is to bury the gas underground. Excess carbon dioxide is already pumped down some conventional wells to encourage extraction of the last bits of natural gas; using it to extract methane from hydrates might be a good idea too.

Fuel test The test will use the Ignik Sikumi well, which was drilled on an ice platform in Prudhoe Bay last winter. Specialized equipment has been installed, including fibre-optic cables to measure the temperature down the well, and injection pipes...

[Cicero]

This worries me. PART of this is concerned with how to get the methane out. But the other part of this is more global warming cr*p—how to keep the CO2 in.

If, as seems likely, they are wrong, and we are heading for colder weather, not warmer, then the last thing we need to do is to spend billions burying CO2.

Earth to the Global Warmists: It ain’t gettin’ any warmer, and all the plants and trees need CO2 to breathe and feed on.

I’d rather keep the gubbermint out of this, and let the energy companies figure it out.

[fella]

“test is to be run by the US Department of Energy (DOE),”

Expect this to go horribly bad with declarations to stop all drilling.

[WOBBLY BOB]

they’ll say it causes earthquakes, climate change, and hair loss in men.

[thulldud]

they’ll say it causes earthquakes, climate change, and hair loss in men.

Followed up by the obligatory, "Women and Minorities Hardest Hit"!