[copious.abundance]

You have made an assumption that few here at peakoil consider valid.

Just as conventional petroleum is in decline world-wide and there remains no evidence that unconventional reserves can replace it (reduced and slower extraction rates, less net energy, greater environmental consequences, higher price, etc.) so to, the natural gas replacements you tout (tight shale gas, hydrates etc.) have similar shortcoming that will render them incapable of making up for global natural gas declines, much less be a mitigation for the much more serious petroleum peak.

>>> CLICK HERE <<<

That fact that you even would consider such higher-hanging fruit (to use Campbells metaphor for inferior petroleum replacements) as more abundant less expensive energy source is a willful misrepresentation of simple fossil-fuel geology and economics.

Shame Oily.

Hundreds of trillions -- nay, quadrillions -- of cubic feet of "high-hanging fruit," economical at the Btu equivalent of $40-$50 oil. Oh the horrors!

[shortonsense]

changing the subject again?

we are talking about inaccessible, diffuse, deep-water gas hydrates lattices under great pressure that bubble away when brought to the surface.

Not free gas in solid rock

Stop acting like hydrates exist only in deep water. Oilfinder already referenced the hydrates on the north slope, on land. I referenced land based hydrates produced in conjunction with a conventional gas field. And they aren't under great pressure either, just the RIGHT pressure, depressurizing them means they go gaseous and can be produced like regular natural gas, JUST LIKE THE GASFIELD I REFERENCED. You wouldn't have had to claim they needed to be scraped off of rocks if you had actually read the links provided back on the first page genius.

[shortonsense]

Just as conventional petroleum is in decline world-wide and there remains no evidence that unconventional reserves can replace it (reduced and slower extraction rates, less net energy, greater environmental consequences, higher price, etc.) so to, the natural gas replacements you tout (tight shale gas, hydrates etc.) have similar shortcoming that will render them incapable of making up for global natural gas declines, much less be a mitigation for the much more serious petroleum peak.

The most developed area of unconventional gas resources in the world is the US. And we've completely reversed natural gas production declines, spanning decades, all through the increased use of these unconventionals.

Figure66 On The Right Hand Side

The US has already pioneered production decline reversals using unconventionals....maybe someone should write a cease and desist letter to all those gas producers, demanding they stop because PStarr doesn't understand how they have accomplished such an impossible task? He's been getting so many of these things wrong lately I'm thinking his self esteem might suffer, maybe we can ask him some basic math questions, simple addition, and hopefully, if he gets that right, we can make a big deal over it, and how deserving of his title?

[and also]

changing the subject again?

we are talking about inaccessible, diffuse, deep-water gas hydrates lattices under great pressure that bubble away when brought to the surface.

Not free gas in solid rock

Just felt a need to comment on this belatedly amid the bickering... not sure pstarr actually read the story that started this thread

"inaccessible": 2,500 feet below mudline and 6,500 feet of water is certainly accessible
"diffuse": a strange way to describe highly-saturated sands highly-saturated in gas hydrates. Do you know the energy density of gas hydrate. do you know what highly-saturated means. these are multi-darcy reservoirs with gas hydrate making up 60 to 90 percent of the pore space.
"under great pressure": no, under the same pressure anything under 6,500 feet of water and 2,500 of mud would be. You want to talk about pressure, that would be the 30,000 foot free gas wells.
"bubble away when brought to the surface": what? how is anyone bringing these to the surface. The idea is that they will dissociate to free gas insitu via pressure reduction in the reservoir, and that gas will be produced like any other gas.

[and also]

changing the subject again?

we are talking about inaccessible, diffuse, deep-water gas hydrates lattices under great pressure that bubble away when brought to the surface.

Not free gas in solid rock

Just felt a need to comment on this belatedly amid the bickering... not sure pstarr actually read the story that started this thread

"inaccessible": 2,500 feet below mudline and 6,500 feet of water is certainly accessible
"diffuse": a strange way to describe highly-saturated sands highly-saturated in gas hydrates. Do you know the energy density of gas hydrate. do you know what highly-saturated means. these are multi-darcy reservoirs with gas hydrate making up 60 to 90 percent of the pore space.
"under great pressure": no, under the same pressure anything under 6,500 feet of water and 2,500 of mud would be. You want to talk about pressure, that would be the 30,000 foot free gas wells.
"bubble away when brought to the surface": what? how is anyone bringing these to the surface. The idea is that they will dissociate to free gas insitu via pressure reduction in the reservoir, and that gas will be produced like any other gas.

How does one trap the gas, that was dissociated via pressure reduction, in sand at 6,500 feet under the surface of the seas? Has this been done before?

Or does it just sound great on paper?

Sorry, the question makes no sense. You don't trap it once you've dissociated it. The idea of course would be to produce it. Its in a sand reservoir (high perm) that is bounded by muds (low perm). The gas is going nowhere but to the well that was used to create the pressure drop. The gas will follow the pressure gradient to the well. This is how a lot of gas is produced.

No, it has not been done before. That's why this is news. Japan will do the first marine production test maybe in 2011-2012. Depends on whether they wait to conduct more production tests (with the US) in Alaska first. What makes this news is that prior to this, the types of gas hydrate reservoirs (highly-saturated and in sand) that could make such production even conceivable had not been seen in the Gulf of Mexico before. This is because such things are assiduously avoided by industry as shallow hazards when drilling for deeper targets.

First US marine production test maybe 2014-2015.

And no, this is obviously not a cure for fossil energy depletion. Just a way to bide some time maybe -maybe -so we can get our act together and make the transition to sustainable fuels a little less painful. What bothers me is people dismiss things like this outright - when it could really help - maybe. It's like some folks want our children to go through he11..
The gas is already trapped. In a sand reservoir encased in impermeable shale. Just like any other gas deposit, except in this case, the gas is also trapped in water.

[AirlinePilot]

First US marine production test maybe 2014-2015.

And no, this is obviously not a cure for fossil energy depletion. Just a way to bide some time maybe -maybe -so we can get our act together and make the transition to sustainable fuels a little less painful.

Sustainable?

Already too late. We are on the cusp of the down slope right now. You'll never get there from here.

Lets see...first test leads to limited production, say in 2015 if we are really lucky. By that time we will likely be producing far less oil than we are now. Unless you can change the discovery curve rather dramatically, and reverse sagging EROEI ratios than you wont get anywhere close to "make the transition to sustainable fuels". Just what does that mean anyway??? Sustainable?? What we have now is not sustainable. Gas hydrates will be a flash in the pan of a dying world economy.

The first thing we need to do is quit thinking that we can continue BAU. This is the giant hulking flaw in all these arguments. The only way we buy time is to right now start using a lot less energy and specifically oil, on a rather grand scale. That is the only real solution and its not happening. It appears it wont be happening until it is forced on us. If that be the case, than global commerce, and exploring for all these pie in the sky energy sources will become either directly impossible or extremely difficult at best. The resulting panic production will produce little to solve any of the larger issues caused by global oil production declines which i have a hunch could be quite spectacular.

All these discussions about plausibility of certain forms and types of energy resources are moot if we cant do something very immediately about depletion and decline. Action must begin in order to mitigate that glaring issue right now so we might actually be able to discuss just such things as gas hydrates down the road.

Things can and will come unraveled plenty fast enough to make this discussion purely a pipe dream. Look around, it's happening already.

[and also]

First US marine production test maybe 2014-2015.

And no, this is obviously not a cure for fossil energy depletion. Just a way to bide some time maybe -maybe -so we can get our act together and make the transition to sustainable fuels a little less painful.

Sustainable?

Already too late. We are on the cusp of the down slope right now. You'll never get there from here.

Lets see...first test leads to limited production, say in 2015 if we are really lucky. By that time we will likely be producing far less oil than we are now. Unless you can change the discovery curve rather dramatically, and reverse sagging EROEI ratios than you wont get anywhere close to "make the transition to sustainable fuels". Just what does that mean anyway??? Sustainable?? What we have now is not sustainable. Gas hydrates will be a flash in the pan of a dying world economy.

The first thing we need to do is quit thinking that we can continue BAU. This is the giant hulking flaw in all these arguments. The only way we buy time is to right now start using a lot less energy and specifically oil, on a rather grand scale. That is the only real solution and its not happening. It appears it wont be happening until it is forced on us. If that be the case, than global commerce, and exploring for all these pie in the sky energy sources will become either directly impossible or extremely difficult at best. The resulting panic production will produce little to solve any of the larger issues caused by global oil production declines which i have a hunch could be quite spectacular.

All these discussions about plausibility of certain forms and types of energy resources are moot if we cant do something very immediately about depletion and decline. Action must begin in order to mitigate that glaring issue right now so we might actually be able to discuss just such things as gas hydrates down the road.

Things can and will come unraveled plenty fast enough to make this discussion purely a pipe dream. Look around, it's happening already.

I disagree entirely. There is little factual in this to get more specific about, unfortunately, but I have two questions: 1) who said anything about "business as usual"? and 2) if we start using much less oil (which I assume is all that can be done about "depletion and decline"), but develop nothing else, is that sustainable? Obviously, we need to work both the supply and the demand side.

[copious.abundance]

Here's the USGS press release, out today:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2227

[copious.abundance]

Even more nifty info here!
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oi ... index.html

[copious.abundance]

Even more nifty info here!
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oi ... index.html

Ooo - more goodies!
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/h ... -final.pdf

Current estimates of the volume of natural gas trapped in hydrates within the United States are on the order of 200,000 trillion cubic feet (TCF). Even if only a small fraction of this volume is recoverable, this natural gas resource could provide an enormous contribution relative to the current domestic consumption level (22 TCF per year) and expected future growth in demand. Hydrates represent a potentially significant energy supply for the Nation.

That's 200 quadrillion cubic feet!



Imagine all the Honda Civic GX's you could power with that!

[copious.abundance]

Another interesting article:

>>> Technology Review <<<

[...]

Last Friday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced the discovery of suitable conditions for mining methane hydrates 1,000 meters beneath the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico. Together with Chevron and the U.S. Department of Energy, the USGS discovered the reserve of hydrates in high concentrations in 15-to-30-meter-thick beds of sand--conditions very much like terrestrial methane hydrate reserves, which have already yielded commercially useful flow rates. These deposits are substantially different from the gas hydrates that have previously been discovered in U.S. coastal waters, which exist in relatively shallow waters at the surface of the seabed and have become a concern for climate scientists because of their potential to melt rapidly and release large quantities of methane into the atmosphere.

In the spring of 2008, a joint Canadian-Japanese expedition in Mallik in the Northwest Territories, Canada, established that methane hydrates could be harvested by using a water pump to depressurize a well already drilled into the reserve. This involved lowering the pressure pumping out the water that naturally accumulates in the well. Crucially, it required only 10 to 15 percent of the energy represented by the gas that flowed out of the well, making it a much more viable approach than earlier methods used to harvest hydrates, which involved melting them with warm water. Standard oil and gas drilling equipment was used to reenter an old well drilled to a depth of 3,500 feet and then "refurbish" it by casing the entire well with lengths of steel tubing that cemented into place in order to prevent it from collapsing.

Hydrates require both cold temperatures and high pressure to form; eliminating either condition frees the gas from its icy cage, but past attempts to do this by heating the hydrates proved prohibitively difficult. The Canadian-Japanese expedition successfully produced up to 4,000 cubic meters of gas a day during a six-day trial in 2008 using depressurization.

"I think [the Gulf of Mexico find] and Mallik are two revolutionary events," says Timothy Collett, a geologist with the USGS and one of the world's foremost authorities on gas hydrates.

[...]

[dohboi]

That's 200 quadrillion cubic feet!



Imagine all the Honda Civic GX's you could power with that!

Imagine the degrees you could further heat the earth with that!

[Gerben]

[...] established that methane hydrates could be harvested [...] The Canadian-Japanese expedition successfully produced up to 4,000 cubic meters of gas a day during a six-day trial in 2008 using depressurization. [...]

give me a ring when that says have been harvested

Read. They have harvested gas.

[Maddog78]

I'll give up my I.C.E. when they pry it from cold dead hands.




(You're probably thinking that won't be too far in the future, bwahahaaaa. )

[copious.abundance]

Can you say with assurance that any of this is even possible?

Not only is it possible, if you read the Technology Review article, you'd find out it's already been done.

We need to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

In other words, you don't want it to be possible. That is your agenda. You're not actually "concerned" about peak oil, the only thing you're "concerned" about is that it doesn't happen any time soon.

We should be working to powerdown, localize, create a solar electric infrastructure

Gee, I thought, " When installed nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro is not sufficient to maintain installed nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro"?