Abstract
Natural gas hydrate (NGH) has been widely considered as an alternative to conventional oil and gas resources in the future energy resource supply since Trofimuk’s first resource assessment in 1973. At least 29 global estimates have been published from various studies so far, among which 24 estimates are greater than the total conventional gas resources. If drawn in chronological order, the 29 historical resource estimates show a clear downward trend, reflecting the changes in our perception with respect to its resource potential with increasing our knowledge on the NGH with time. A time series of the 29 estimates was used to establish a statistical model for predict the future trend. The model produces an expected resource value of 41.46 × 1012 m3 at the year of 2050. The statistical trend projected future gas hydrate resource is only about 10% of total natural gas resource in conventional reservoir, consistent with estimates of global technically recoverable resources (TRR) in gas hydrate from Monte Carlo technique based on volumetric and material balance approaches. Considering the technical challenges and high cost in commercial production and the lack of competitive advantages compared with rapid growing unconventional and renewable resources, only those on the very top of the gas hydrate resource pyramid will be added to future energy supply. It is unlikely that the NGH will be the major energy source in the future.
Highlights
Trofimuk assessed global natural gas hydrate (NGH) resources in 1973 with an in-place estimate of 3.023.09×1018 m3 gas equivalent (Trofimuk et al 1973)
These findings suggest that the total potential resources of all kinds of oil and gas resource, including NGH, cannot exceed the total amount of oil and gas expelled from the source rocks, quantitatively expressed as in Eq 12 and Fig. 7a2/a3
Where QNGH—total potential NGH resource; Qp—total generated hydrocarbon amount, including the hydrocarbon amounts remained in source rocks and expelled from source rocks; Qae—hydrocarbon amount expelled from source rocks; Qae—hydrocarbon amount expelled from source rocks in the F-HDF above the BHAD; VGHSZ—stratigraphic volume of gas hydrate stable zone; VF-HDF—stratigraphic volume of free hydrocarbon dynamic field above the BHAD; RNGH—ratio of total NGH resources to the total oil and gas resources in F-HDF; AGHSZ and HGHSZ—average area and thickness of GHSZ, respectively; and AF-HDF and HF-HDF— average and thickness of F-HDF, respectively
Summary
Trofimuk assessed global natural gas hydrate (NGH) resources in 1973 with an in-place estimate of 3.023.09×1018 m3 gas equivalent (Trofimuk et al 1973). This vast energy resource in NGH was considered as a solution to future energy shortage (Arthur 2011; Wadham et al 2012). Other scholars and government agencies have conducted studies on this issue and obtained at least 29 different estimates with the maximum and minimum values varying by more than 10,000 times. Many still believed that NGH will be the main energy source in the future for the following reasons. (1) The estimated resource is enormous; among the 29 global estimates, 24 (Fig. 1b) are larger than the total conventional gas resource in place of 0.67×1015. Data from China National Knowledge Infrastrure (CNKI) Data from Elsevier (b) 10000
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