Huge gas hydrate field in Alaska could heat 100 million homes

Washington Post:

Federal scientists have concluded that Alaska's North Slope holds one of the nation's largest deposits of recoverable natural gas in the form of gas hydrates, a finding that could open a major new front in domestic energy exploration.

Researchers have speculated for years that gas hydrates -- a combination of gas and water locked in an icelike solid that forms under high pressure and low temperatures -- could provide an important source of natural gas in the United States and worldwide.

Today the U.S. Geological Survey will release a study estimating that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can be extracted from Alaska's gas hydrates, an amount that could heat more than 100 million average homes for more than a decade.

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Part of the reserve's significance, federal officials said, is that gas companies will be able to tap into it with existing technology. A coalition of American and international experts conducted three tests on gas hydrates over the past five years in the United States and Canada and demonstrated that the gas can be extracted by reducing the pressure that binds them together. Gas hydrates have also been found in the Wyoming basin, Texas's western Gulf basin, and the San Juan basin in New Mexico and Colorado, as well as in several offshore areas.

"The assessment points to a truly significant potential for natural gas hydrates to contribute to the energy mix of the United States and the world," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in a statement. "This study also brings us closer to realizing the potential of this clean-burning natural gas resource."

The prospect of extracting methane from gas hydrates, some of which lie below the permafrost of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, worries some environmentalists.

Athan Manuel, who directs the lands program for the Sierra Club advocacy group, said that the refuge should remain "inviolate" and that tapping into gas hydrates can harm less-pristine areas as well.

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The energy hate groups in the environmental movement are so predictable. Whatever source of energy emerges they find reasons to oppose it. Natural gas is clean energy and removing it from these hydrate formations will actually reduce the potential for natural methane to seep into the atmosphere.

The pipeline that Sarah Palin recently got approved would carry this gas to the lower 48. That is probably another reason for the anti energy left to oppose its development.

Hat tip to Graham.

The CNN story on the energy potential gas hydrates says the natural gas would go straight to the pipeline and not be released into the atmosphere.