Natural Gas Hydrates: Energy Locked in Cages

Abstract

AbstractEnergy is an unavoidable component of our day-to-day living and an essential element of global progress. The significance of energy lies in its wide appropriateness and imperativeness. The demand for energy is increasing every year in parallel with population and economics. As the available conventional energy resources are limited and irrational consumption of these resources has a detrimental effect on environment, search for unconventional energy development and appraisal has been the need of this century. Unconventional energy resources like gas hydrates, shale gas, tight gas, and coal bed methane are huge resources of natural gas, which like conventional resources has huge potential to satiate our energy demand. Interest in natural gas is increasing exponentially mainly due to it being relatively clean with lesser overall CO2 emission, compared to coal and crude oil. Presence of natural gas hydrates in shallow geosphere has been recognized in recent years as a huge unconventional resource of clean methane. The significant amount of methane trapped in natural gas hydrate reservoirs generally found in permafrost and marine sediments makes this resource an attractive target for future energy security and sustainability. This chapter introduces natural gas hydrates, and its structural and reservoir information, provides a background for understanding its occurrence, and relates the importance of numerical simulation in understanding hydrate reservoirs. This chapter also discusses the methane-producing techniques from hydrate reservoirs, operational and natural geohazards associated with natural gas hydrates, and implications of gas hydrate reservoirs to global climate and finally describes the future prospects of natural gas hydrates. We believe that this chapter will work as a guideline for individuals from the academic to the research community to form a strong base to develop new methodologies to harness this huge natural gas resource.KeywordsGas hydratesProduction techniquesNumerical simulationOperational geohazardNatural geohazardGlobal climate