Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (73824)	4/2/2001 12:20:43 AM
From: t4texas	Respond to of 99985

i certainly do not disagree with you, but... there is no guarantee that we have the methane hydrate problems fully characterized and thus fully understood yet. i just heard about this stuff tonight and read some quasi-technical articles, and i appears to me there are a ton of issues to solve. plus they are all under more than 500 meters of water. (i am just imagining the greenhouse crowds reaction when the first small accident were to happen.) based on what i have read so far, it would be great to appropriate more money to this -- like the space program. you mentioned the space program, but the worry there was a clear and present danger. people are not that worried about energy at this time. if the market prices went up a lot, lot more, then we could see this sort of thing getting some traction for research. i saw in an article that congress had put a bunch of money into this, and then a few years later cut way back. something did not pan out in the research money spent previously, i suppose. anyway since we know how to get oil and ng out of the ground now, i don't see any alternative to that method for a good while. i think we should be drilling in other water places offshore usa anyway.

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (73824)	4/2/2001 2:31:30 AM
From: t4texas	Respond to of 99985

here is some methane hydrate safety text from the link below: clearly very interesting stuff but given the state of the art today, it is bomb material. Sea floor stability and safety are two important issues related to gas hydrates. Sea floor stability refers to the susceptibility of the sea floor to collapse and slide as the result of gas hydrate disassociation. The safety issue refers to petroleum drilling and production hazards that may occur in association with gas hydrates in both offshore and onshore environments. The safety issue affects current oil and gas production as well as being of concern to possible hydrate development in the future. Throughout the world, oil and gas drilling is moving into regions where safety problems related to gas hydrates may be anticipated. Oil and gas operators have recorded numerous drilling and production problems attributed to the presence of gas hydrates, including uncontrolled gas releases during drilling, collapse of well casings, and gas leakage to the surface. In the marine environment, gas leakage to the surface around the outside of the well casing may result in local sea floor subsidence and the loss of support for foundations of drilling platforms. These problems are generally caused by the dissociation of gas hydrate due to heating by either warm drilling fluids or from the production of hot hydrocarbons from depth during conventional oil and gas production. Subsea pipelines may also be affected by loss of sea floor support from hydrates destabilized by warming. Hazards arise because gas hydrates are only quasi-stable; if the temperature is increased at a fixed pressure or the pressure decreased at fixed temperature, or both temperature increased and pressure decreased, it is easy to pass out of the stability regime of hydrates. 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. It is possible that both natural and human-induced changes can contribute to in-situ gas hydrate destabilization, which may convert an offshore hydrate-bearing sediment to a gassy water-rich fluid, triggering sea floor subsidence and catastrophic landslides. Evidence implicating gas hydrates in triggering sea floor landslides has been found along the Atlantic Ocean margin of the United States.(2) The mechanisms controlling gas hydrate-induced sea floor subsidence and landslides are not well known, but these processes may release large volumes of methane to the Earth's oceans and atmosphere. Methane is a "greenhouse" gas, 10 times more effective than carbon dioxide in the process believed by many to cause climate warming. cnie.org