Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States. Committee on Assessment of the Department of Energy's Methane Hydrate Research and Development Program: Evaluating Methane Hydrate as a Future Energy Resource

摘要

Methane hydrate is a naturally occurring solid that forms in sediments when methane, in high concentrations, and water combine at low temperatures and high pressures. The incentive for research on methane hydrate is the less than 30-year-old realization that methane hydrate occurs in abundance on the world's continental margins and in permafrost regions, and that it could ultimately provide an additional, potentially significant, unconventional source of methane to augment conventional natural gas supplies. Because methane, the main component of natural gas, releases less carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced during combustion than other fossil fuels, strong interest exists to use natural gas as a key source of energy in the nation's transition to a less carbon-intensive energy portfolio. In the United States, significant accumulations of methane hydrate occur in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Pacific and Eastern seaboards, and on the Alaska North Slope.