JOGMEC

tce

OIL & GAS

Flaring on a Japanese deepwater drilling rig
in the Pacific Ocean signals the first offshore
production of gas from frozen subsea deposits

Frozen assets
Natural gas hydrates
show huge promise as
a brand new source of
untapped energy says
Mahdi Kapateh

APAN played host to an exciting and

potentially world-changing engineering
experiment in March that saw it
successfully extract natural gas from frozen
subsea deposits.
Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National
Corporation (JOGMEC) estimates that the
Nankai trough alone, where the tests are being
conducted, contains 1.1tn m3 of natural gas
equivalent to 11 years of LNG imports for the
resource-poor nation.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The US
Department of Energys Oak Ridge National
Laboratory estimates that global reserves of
so-called gas hydrates could meet current
energy demands for more than 3,000 years.
Most of the worlds gas hydrates made

up of hydrocarbons trapped in cages of

ice exist at the bottoms of oceans and in
deep permafrost layers onshore. This makes
their exploitation inherently costly and
uneconomical today. However, given the
current rate of research and development
(most notably focussed around Japan,
Canada, and Alaska), many scientists believe
gas hydrates will satisfy much of the worlds
growing appetite for energy.
This will lead to a restructure of global
geopolitics, as many countries with limited
access to fossil fuels suddenly gain their own
abundant reserves of gas (see Figure 1).

why natural gas hydrates?

Conveniently-exploitable reserves of
fossil fuels are dwindling fast, pushing
energy companies to search more extreme
environments for oil and gas.
Clathrates of gas hydrates are found in
deepsea and permafrost regions, and form
when guest molecules (or formers) such as
methane and water molecules are aligned
to stabilise at temperatures around 300K
and pressures exceeding 6 bar. The guest
molecule is trapped in a water cage and
is stabilised by Van der Waals forces. The
trapped hydrocarbons repulsive properties
determine the type of cage formed (see
Figure 2).
The volume of gas stored is, on average,
equivalent to that of highly-compressed gas
at 00C and 180 bar. Despite having a lower
energy density than LNG, it is sufficiently
high to make gas transportation in hydrates
an economically-viable possibility.

the search for viability

Arctic Ocean

Atlantic
Ocean

Pacific
Ocean

Pacific
Ocean
Indian
Ocean

Figure 1: Known and inferred natural gas hydrate deposits in permafrost (blue diamonds)
and offshore (red dots) adapted from the US Geological Survey

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www.tcetoday.com may 2013

While we do not have an economically-viable

method for hydrate extraction yet, numerous
have been examined. Most of these involve
the dissociation of gas hydrates by:
increasing the temperature of gas hydrate
reservoirs above their hydrate stability zone
using hot water or steam injection;
decreasing the reservoir pressure below the
hydrate stability zone; or
injecting alcohol-based inhibitors such as
methanol, ethanol and glycols.
Thermal stimulation is a simple and viable
option, however, it is prohibitively expensive.
Furthermore, pumping thousands of litres of
inhibitors will cause severe environmental
issues and will be expensive. Many scientists
conclude that the most economicallyviable option will be the depressurisation
of reservoirs as was carried out during the
recent Japanese breakthrough.

CAREERS
OIL & GAS tce
green energy from
fossil fuels
But the promise of gas hydrates does not end
with them simply being combusted. Projects
are also under way to use the ice cages to
lock up industrial emissions by replacing the
methane (CH4) with CO2.
There are thought to be two main
mechanisms of CO2 sequestration in
hydrates. In the first method the injected
CO2 dissociates CH4 molecules and then the
hydrate reforms.
The second method is known as direct
molecular exchange and is very similar to
the first, with the key difference that hydrate
integrity remains intact during the exchange.
However, the latter method is restricted to
releasing CH4 from only the largest cages.
Between February and April last year,
ConocoPhilips and JOGMEC used CO2
sequestration to produce CH4 from the Ignik
Sikumi gas hydrate field. The project achieved
constant gas flowback during the six-week
period and was considered highly successful
though the exact mechanism of sequestration
remains unknown.

extreme problems
Of course, energy companies dont get it all
their own way, with the extreme conditions
needed to form gas hydrates presenting a
number of safety and production issues.
For hydrates to form, water and former
molecules must be present in a very narrow
temperature and pressure range. In the
offshore environment, this leads to the
natural formation of hydrates in seismic
faultlines but also in conventional oil and
gas production pipelines where they form a
solid blockage. Hydrates can completely or
partially block a pipeline, resulting in up to
several months production downtime, as
well as giving rise to a number of extremely
serious safety issues.
To minimise hydrate formation in their
infrastructure, oil companies inject alcoholbased inhibitors as well as kinetic hydrate
inhibitors (KHIs) at the wellhead.
Hydrate blockages may dissociate by
disruption of the hydrate equilibrium, either
through natural means or by locally heating
the plug using blowtorches. When plugs
dissociate, they first detach from the pipe
walls, thus any pressure gradient causes
the plug to be shot through the pipeline
like a torpedo at speeds of up to 300 km/h.
The effects can be disastrous destroying
infrastruture and killing workers.
In deepsea floors where gas hydrates are
present, pumping hot oil through the drill
pipes may lead to a temperature rise in the
sediments liberating large quantities of
methane, leading to gas blowouts, loss of
support for pipelines as well as underwater

Methane, ethane,
carbon dioxide...

Water molecule cage

512 62

Structure I

Propane, iso-butane,
natural gas...

16
12

512 64
3

Gas molecule
(eg methane)

Structure II

2
43 56 63

landslides and subsequent release of even

more methane to the atmosphere.
Technological measures will need to be
improved if the commercial development
of gas hydrates is to have a safer future.

Methane + neohexane,
methane + cycloheptane...

1
512 68

Structure H

Figure 2: The three most common forms

of hydrate cages. Note: 512 68 is a water
cage comprising of 12 pentagonal and eight
hexagonal faces

a bright future
Peering even further into the future, there
are research and commercial institutions
around the world investigating other
exciting applications for gas hydrates,
including the removal and separation
of CO2 from flue gases using hydrate
formation, and research at UK university
Heriot Watts Centre for Gas Hydrate
Research has shown they can be used in
heat pump systems to provide low-cost
refrigeration technology while producing
highly pure water.
A number of companies have moved to
develop specialised transportation ships
where hydrates are produced on board,
transported in near adiabatic vessels and
regasified when the ship reaches port. This
would provide access to huge volumes of
conventional gas reserves that are either
too far from existing pipelines or too small
to justify an LNG production plant. It is
estimated that transportation in a hydrate
state could reduce the overall cost by over
25%.
None of the safety issues associated with
gas hydrate exploitation and use appear
insurmountable. Its an exciting time for
engineers working in this field, as we stand
on the cusp of promising developments for
global energy supply. tce
Mahdi Kapateh (mahdi.kapateh@pet.
hw.ac.uk) is a PhD candidate at the
Centre for Gas Hydrate Research at
Heriot Watt University
Acknowledgements: Jinhai Yang, Antonin
Chapoy and Bahman Tohidi

Our conveniently-exploitable
reserves are dwindling fast.
This fact has placed greater
demand on exploitation of
new reserves in extreme
conditions such as deep seas
and permafrost regions.
may 2013 www.tcetoday.com

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