Methane Hydrates

Jake Ross and Yuliana Proenza

The Three Questions

What is a Gas Hydrate?

What is their potential as an energy resource?
What role do they play in global climate
change?

What is a Gas Hydrate?

A gas hydrate is a crystalline solid; its building blocks consist

of a gas molecule surrounded by a cage of water molecules.

It is similar to ice, except that the crystalline structure is

stabilized by the guest gas molecule within the cage of water
molecules.

Suitable gases are: carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and

several low-carbon-number hydrocarbons. Most gas hydrates ,
however are Methane Hydrates.

Hydrate Samples

Gas hydrates in sea-floor mounds Here methane

gas is actively dissociating from a hydrate mound.

Gas hydrate can occur as nodules, laminae, or veins within sediment.

CH4 Hydrate Stability

Where are Methane Hydrates

located?
Found in 4 major location types

Subduction zones (e.g., Nankai Trough Japan, Cascadia Basin)

Passive Margins (e.g., Blake Ridge on the southeast cost of the US)
Off-shore hydrocarbon (e.g., Gulf of Mexico, North Slope Alaska)
On-shore Arctic Permafrost (e.g., Mackenzie Delta, Arctic Russia,
Arctic Alaska)

Where are Methane Hydrates

located?

Methane hydrate occurs in a zone referred to as the

hydrate stability zone.
The zone lies roughly parallel to the land or seafloor
surface.
Permafrost regions,
depths about 150 - 2000 m below the surface.
In oceanic sediment
ocean is at least 300 m deep,
depths of 0 - 1,100 m below the seafloor.

Where are Methane Hydrates

located?

Hydrate concentration occurs at depocenters

Where there is a rapid accumulation of organic detritus (from which

bacteria generate methane). Carbon isotope analyses indicate
most of the methane in hydrates is microbial, however thermogenic
sources have been identified in the Gulf of Mexico

Where there is a rapid accumulation of sediments (which protect

detritus from oxidation).

What is the potential of

CH4 Hydrates as an energy resource

Why are CH4 Hydrates a good energy

resource

The gas is held in a crystal structure, therefore gas molecules are

more densely packed than in conventional or other unconventional
gas traps.

Hydrate forms as cement in the pore spaces of sediment and has the
capacity to fill sediment pore space and reduce permeability. CH4 hydrate-cemented strata thereby act as seals for trapped free gas

Production of gas from hydrate-sealed traps may be an easy way to

extract hydrate gas because the reduction of pressure caused by
production can initiate a breakdown of hydrates and a recharging of
the trap with gas

CH4 Hydrates and Climate Change

Methane is a very effective greenhouse gas. It is ten times more

potent than carbon dioxide.

There is increasing evidence that points to the periodic massive

release of methane into the atmosphere over geological timescales.
Are these enormous releases of methane a cause or an effect of global
climate change?

Global warming may cause hydrate destabilization through a rise in ocean

bottom water temperatures. The increased methane content in the
atmosphere in turn would be expected to accelerate warming, causing
further dissociation, potentially resulting in run away global warming.

Sea level rise, however, during warm periods may act to stabilize hydrates
by increasing hydrostatic pressure, thereby acting as a check on warming.

Hydrate dissociation may act as a check on glaciations, whereby reduced

sea levels may cause seafloor hydrate dissociation, releasing methane and
warming the climate.

This diagram illustrates the affect sea level change has on the stability
of hydrates.