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To: joseph krinsky who wrote (238651)	3/16/2002 4:13:13 PM
From: nolimitz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

cnie.org . However, it is likely that most of the hydrate occurs in low concentrations and has no commercial potential.(1 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