No Barrow hydrate research funds; wells will be drilled
The U.S. Department of Energy is no longer funding research into possible methane hydrate deposits in the Barrow gas fields on Alaska’s North Slope, Petroleum News has learned. As a consequence, a North Slope Borough research team involving Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska is no longer proceeding with phase two of the research.
“We’re going ahead as a development project and just cutting out the (methane hydrate) science,” Tom Walsh, a managing partner of PRA, told Petroleum News Feb. 17.
The team had planned to drill two methane hydrate test wells and four horizontal development wells in the gas fields but will instead drill six horizontal development wells, Walsh said. The concept behind the previously planned test wells was to verify the presence of methane hydrate in the fields and to try out a methane hydrate production technique.
Robert Dillon from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office confirmed the cancellation of DOE funding for the Barrow gas fields project. As a consequence of DOE budget cuts the agency did not have the money for the second phase of the project, Dillon told Petroleum News Feb. 17.
“We’ve been asking them to reconsider but so far haven’t been successful in that,” Dillon said.
But there is still DOE funding for two other North Slope methane hydrate projects, one led by BP and the other led by ConocoPhillips, he said.
As reported in the Feb. 14 issue of Petroleum News, a report on the DOE methane hydrate program, published by the National Research Council Jan. 29, had indicated that the Barrow gas field’s methane hydrate project was continuing. However, it now appears that the information in that report was out of date.
The huge volumes of methane locked up in methane hydrate deposits under the North Slope could become a major source of natural gas for export through a future North Slope gas pipeline, and the close proximity of an existing oilfield infrastructure to these deposits has made the deposits a prime focus of methane hydrate research. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are between 25.2 trillion and 157.8 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas in these deposits.
Jocelyn Grozic, a hydrate researcher and engineering professor at the University of Calgary, has said this source of energy “could provide energy to North America for the next 64,000 years.”
—Petroleum News
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