Statement of
Robert S. Kripowicz
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Fossil Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Before the
Subcommittee on Energy, Research, Development, Production, and Regulation
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
United States Senate
May 21, 1998

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to represent the Department of Energy and to present our views on the potential for methane hydrates as a future source of natural gas and more specifically, to review the progress we are making in preparing a multi-agency coordinated research plan for this potentially vast energy resource. I will also discuss our position on S. 1418, the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act of 1997.

What Are Methane Hydrates?

Simply put, a methane hydrate is a cage-like lattice of ice, inside of which are trapped molecules of methane (the chief constituent of natural gas). In fact, the name for its parent class of compounds, "clathrates," comes from the Latin word meaning "to enclose with bars."

Methane hydrates form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters where high pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred meters thick.

Scientists have known about methane hydrates for a century or more. French scientists studied hydrates in 1890. In the 1930s, as natural gas pipelines were extended into colder climates, engineers discovered that hydrates, rather than ice, would form in the lines, often plugging the flow of gas. These crystals, although unmistakably a combination of both water and natural gas, would often form at temperatures well above the freezing point of ordinary ice. Yet, for the next three decades, methane hydrates were considered only a nuisance, or at best, a laboratory oddity.

That viewpoint changed in 1964. In a northern Siberian gas field named Messoyakha, a Russian drilling crew discovered natural gas in the "frozen state," or in other words, methane hydrates occurring naturally. Subsequent reports of potentially vast deposits of "solid" natural gas in the former Soviet Union intensified interest and sent geologists worldwide on a search for how -- and where else -- methane hydrates might occur in nature. In the 1970s, hydrates were found in ocean sediments.

In late 1981, the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger, assigned by the National Science Foundation to explore off the coast of Guatemala, unexpectedly bored into a methane hydrate deposit. Unlike previous drilling operations which had encountered evidence of hydrates, researchers onboard the Challenger were able to recover a sample intact.

Today, methane hydrates have been detected around most continental margins. Around the United States, large deposits have been identified and studied in Alaska, the west coast from California to Washington, the east coast, including the Blake Ridge offshore of the Carolinas, and in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrates of the United States to range from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recovered gas resources and reserves in the United States.

Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrates approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,000 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently known gas reserves.

This huge potential, alone, warrants a new look at advanced technologies that might one day reliably and cost-effectively detect and produce natural gas from methane hydrates.

Why the New Interest in Hydrates?

If only 1 percent of the methane hydrate resource could be made technically and economically recoverable, the United States could more than double its domestic natural gas resource base.

The United States will consume increasing volumes of natural gas well into the 21st century. U.S. gas consumption is expected to increase from almost 23 trillion cubic feet in 1996 to more than 32 trillion cubic feet in 2020 -- a projected increase of 40 percent.

Natural gas is expected to take on a greater role in power generation, largely because of increasing pressure for clean fuels and the relatively low capital costs of building new natural gas-fired power equipment. Also, gas demand is expected to grow because of its expanded use as a transportation fuel and potentially, in the longer-term, as a source of alternative liquid fuels (gas-to-liquids conversion) and hydrogen for fuel cells. Should the nation move to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as part of our commitment to greenhouse gas reduction, the use natural gas potentially could increase even more.

Given the growing demand for natural gas, the development of new, cost-effective supplies can play a major role in moderating price increases and assuring consumer confidence in the long-term availability of reliable, affordable fuel. Yet, today, the potential to extract commercially-relevant quantities of natural gas from hydrates is speculative at best. With no immediate economic payoff, the private sector is not vigorously pursuing research that could make methane hydrates technically and economically viable. Therefore, federal R&D is the primary way the United States can begin exploring the future viability of a high-risk resource whose long-range possibilities might one day dramatically change the world's energy portfolio.

A Vast New Source of Energy or a Safety and Environmental Hazard?

Methane hydrates represent a tantalizing energy prospect; yet, at the same time, there are significant safety and environmental issues. The hydrate structure encases methane at very high concentrations. A single unit of hydrate, when heated and depressurized, can release 160 times its volume in gas.

Computer simulations indicate that thermal recovery methods, such as the use of hot water or steam flooding, could make hydrates a technically recoverable resource. Alternatively, methods that dissociate the gas by reducing the reservoir pressure may be possible. Chemical injection to decrease the stability of the hydrate lattice could be another approach.

This potential for large volumes of methane to be released due to destabilization of the hydrate formation can also create safety problems, however. Offshore operators are increasingly reporting problems of drilling through hydrates. Normal-speed drilling generates sufficient heat to decompose surrounding hydrates, resulting in high-gas-content mud that can contribute to loss of well control. Hydrates also can form either in the well bore or in connecting lines, plugging the flow. Also, as hydrates decompose, particularly at or near the sea floor, subsidence can occur, potentially causing a loss of foundation support for offshore platforms or possibly damaging underwater cables.

Research into methane hydrates, therefore, could benefit conventional oil and gas operations by developing improved methods to anticipate and diagnose the presence of these formations. As producers move increasingly into regions where hydrates are likely to be found, the federal R&D program could provide important information to mitigate safety and environmental hazards.

DOE's Previous R&D Program

The Glomar Challenger's retrieval of a 3-foot long hydrate core in 1981 -- the only one at that time known to exist in the Western Hemisphere -- intensified interest in methane hydrates. The core was shipped to the Colorado School of Mines, which asked several organizations for proposals on how they would study the sample. Six organizations were chosen to carry out the analyses, including the Department of Energy's Morgantown Energy Technology Center, now part of the Federal Energy Technology Center. (The others were the USGS at Menlo Park, CA; the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, CO; the University of California at Los Angeles; Texas A&M University; and the Sohio Research Center in Cleveland, OH.)

The core studies kicked off a new effort by the DOE Office of Fossil Energy to study the physical and chemical properties of hydrates, the mechanisms for their formation and dissociation, and the geological characteristics of marine and Arctic hydrate formations.

From 1982-1992, DOE's methane hydrate program spent $8 million in developing a foundation of basic knowledge about the location and thermodynamic properties of gas hydrates. The DOE-supported program:

• established the existence of hydrates in the Kuparuk Field on the north slope of Alaska;
• completed studies of 15 offshore hydrate basins;
• developed production models for depressurizing and heating hydrates to release gas,
• developed preliminary estimates of gas-in-place for hydrate deposits, and
• built the Gas Hydrate and Sediment Test Lab Instrument, a device that can form hydrates within sediments in a laboratory chamber that simulates deep-sea conditions.

DOE's initial methane hydrate research ended as priorities shifted to more near-term exploration and production R&D. Work continued at relatively small scales at the USGS, universities, other laboratories, and overseas. Studies of the Blake Ridge formation offshore of the Carolinas in 1995 (part of the USGS Ocean Drilling Program Leg 164) contributed significantly to our understanding of hydrates and a refinement of potential resource estimates.

In FY 1997 and FY 1998, DOE provided a small amount of funding from its Natural Gas Supply Program to support activities in preparation for a more definitive program proposed for FY 1999. We participated in the testing and sample analysis of a 1,200-meter deep well in the Mackenzie Delta of Canada drilled by Japan National Oil Company. We also began processing and evaluating seismic data from the hydrate regions of the Gulf of Mexico, and began designing a global database of gas hydrates and related gas deposits. The Department also began participating in the Colorado School of Mines gas hydrate university/industry consortium which is studying the problem of hydrate plugging in conventional wells and handling facilities.

The Development of a New Gas Hydrate R&D Initiative

In its 1997 report, the Energy Research and Development Panel of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended "a major initiative for DOE to work with USGS, the Naval Research Lab, Mineral Management Service, and the industry to evaluate the production potential of methane hydrates in U.S. coastal waters and world wide." PCAST also called attention to the possibility that studies of methane hydrates could lead to possible sequestering of carbon dioxide in CO2 hydrates.

On January 21-22, 1998, DOE hosted a workshop in Denver on the "Future of Methane Hydrate Research and Resource Development." The objective was to take the first step in developing, jointly with the Department of the Interior and the Department of Defense (Naval Research Laboratory), a new R&D program for methane hydrates.

On May 12, 1998, a second workshop was held in Washington, DC, specifically to review a "strawman" Methane Hydrates Program Plan that outlined a four-pronged approach to answering the key questions concerning future methane hydrate production:

1) How Much?

Research Needs The huge range in estimates of hydrate volume underscores the lack of detailed understanding of the location, volume, physical character, and formation mechanisms of hydrate deposits in the United States and the world.

Program Goal: Determine the location and sedimentary relationships of methane hydrate resources to assess their potential as a domestic and global fuel resource.

2) How to Produce the Resource?

Research Needs: In only one documented instance (and this is debated), there appears to be commercial gas production with replenishment from hydrates. Much more work in depressurization, thermal processes, and solvent injection is needed to document and field test these techniques.

Program Goal: Develop the knowledge and technology necessary for commercial production of methane from oceanic and permafrost hydrate systems by 2015.

3) How to Assess Impact?

Research Needs: Virtually nothing is known about the stability of gas hydrates, especially those dispersed along the sea floor, in a period of global climate change. For example, could global warming affect outcrops of methane hydrates at the sea floor and lead to significant releases of methane, a gas that is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas? The fate of methane in seawater is just as unclear.

Goal: Develop an understanding of the dynamics and distribution of oceanic and permafrost methane hydrate systems sufficient to quantify their role in the global carbon cycle and climate change.

4) How to Ensure Safety?

Research Needs: Arctic and marine hydrates are known to cause drilling problems, blowouts, casing collapse, and well-site subsidence in conventional drilling and production. Research is needed to accurately document drilling and production problems caused by gas hydrates and to develop techniques to avoid or mitigate hazards. Long-term impacts on sea floor stability and safety due to methane production from hydrates must also be investigated. It is not known, for example, if hydrate production might lead to sea floor subsidence.

Goal: Develop an understanding of the hydrate system in near-sea floor sediments and sedimentary processes, including sediment mass movement and methane release so that safe, standardized procedures for hydrocarbon production and ocean engineering can be assured.

The Department has also posted the draft Methane Hydrates Program Plan on its Fossil Energy Web Site (http://www.fe.doe.gov) and has provided a way for external users to submit comments on the plan electronically.

The results of the two workshops and the stakeholder comments will be incorporated into a final Program Plan scheduled for completion in June 1998. This plan will form the basis for further R&D in FY 1999 and beyond.

Because future program activities are still in the formative stage, DOE requested only a minimal level of R&D funding in its fiscal year 1999 budget submission to Congress. Included in the budget proposal is $500,000 to begin answering the key uncertainties that must be addressed before methane hydrates become a commercially realistic energy resource.

The Department's Views on S. 1418, the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act

S. 1418 would promote the research, identification, assessment, exploration, and development of methane hydrate resources. This legislation provides a clear endorsement from Congress of federal research efforts to better understand the true energy potential of methane hydrates. S. 1418 is consistent with the goals we have established for the federal hydrates R&D program; therefore, the Department can support this legislation.

We are particularly pleased to see the Congress emphasize in Sec.3 (d)(1), the need to facilitate and develop partnerships among government, industry and academia in future hydrate R&D. This concept of a public-private partnership, with shared responsibilities and resources, is fundamental to our fossil energy R&D program. It is particularly important that the private sector, which will ultimately be responsible for converting R&D results into commercially-viable production methods, be part of the project team early in the R&D process. We expect to see substantial industry cost-sharing in those activities that have significance for current drilling practices, such as the studies of hydrate mechanical properties and ocean engineering that I mentioned in Goal 4 above. As other longer-term technologies mature, we expect the proportion of industry cost-sharing in these areas to increase to significant levels. We also will seek a wide range of private sector and academic partners. This will expedite significantly the transfer of technology that evolves from this effort.

We also applaud the Congressional direction to "ensure that data and information developed through the program are accessible and widely disseminated...." Working with the Natural Gas Supply Association and the International Centre for Gas Technology Information, we are proposing to develop a methane hydrates Internet site that will be used to enhance information dissemination among the world's community of hydrate researchers and technology users, as well as to obtain stakeholder input.

We are also pleased that the Congress has recognized the importance of cooperation among Federal agencies in developing potentially promising hydrate technologies. We would not be nearly as well positioned to begin a new, intensified examination of the hydrate potential had it not been for the excellent work of the USGS and the Naval Research Laboratory. The coordinated involvement of these organizations, along with others such as the National Science Foundation, the Minerals Management Service, the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, and the Gas Research Institute, will be essential in carrying out a productive and effectively managed R&D program.

This concludes my prepared statement. I will be pleased to answer any questions you or Members of the Subcommittee may have.