Natural Gas Hydrates: A Review

A strong upward trend exists for the consumption of all energy sources as people throughout the world strive for a higher standard of living. Someday, possibly soon, the earth's store of easily accessed hydrocarbons will no longer satisfy our growing economies and populations. By then, an unfamiliar but kindred hydrocarbon resource called natural gas hydrate may become a significant source of energy. Approximately 35 years ago, Russian scientists made what was then a bold assertion that gas hydrates, a crystalline solid of water and natural gas and a historical curiosity to physical chemists, should occur in abundance in the natural environment. Since this early start, the scientific foundation has been built for the realization that gas hydrates are a global phenomenon, occurring in permafrost regions of the arctic and in deep-water parts of most continental margins worldwide. The amount of natural gas contained in the world's gas-hydrate accumulations is enormous, but these estimates remain highly speculative. Researchers have long speculated that gas hydrates could eventually be a commercial producible energy resource, yet technical and economic hurdles have historically made gas-hydrate development a distant goal instead of a near-term possibility. This view began to change in recent years with the realization that this unconventional resource could possibly be developed with the existing conventional oil and gas production technology. The pace of gas-hydrate energy assessment projects has significantly accelerated over the past several years, but many critical gas-hydrate exploration and development questions still remain. The exploitation and potential development of gas-hydrate resources is a complex technological problem. However, humans have successfully dealt with such complicated problems in the past to satisfy our energy needs; technical innovations have been key to our historical successes.