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increase in world population and the desire for all to increase their standard of living. During this time, the major source of energy is projected to remain hydrocarbon fuels—oil, gas, and coal. Indeed, these fuels are expected to supply around 80% of the energy in 2030. The global endowments of oil, gas, and coal are considered to be ample to supply the world with fuel in most of the 21st century. However, to meet demand, the energy industry will need technology improvements and will need to improve how it burns or uses fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions. Constraints that could affect such efforts and, thus, the supply of energy in the future, consist of environmental concerns, manpower limitations, technical issues, restrictions on access to the deposits, and availability of the capital needed to fund the projects. Technology improvements in materials, such as polymers, chemicals, propping agents, metals, composites,

and electronics, must occur in areas where steam injection is required and in deep high-pressure, high-temperature reservoirs in order for the needed energy resources to be obtained in an environmentally acceptable manner.

References

1. Facing the Hard Truths about Energy—A Comprehensive View to 2030 of Global Oil and Natural Gas, (National Petroleum Council, Washington, DC, 2007); www.npc.org (accessed January 2008). 2. World Energy Outlook 2006, (International Energy Agency, Paris, 2007); www.iea.org (accessed January 2008). 3. C.J. Campbell, The Coming Oil Crisis (Multi-Science Publishing, Essex, UK, 1997). 4. J.A. Masters, AAPG Bull. 63 (2), 152 (1979). 5. H.-H. Rogner, “An Assessment of World Hydrocarbon Resources” (WP96-26, IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria, May 1996).

Methane Hydrates: An Abundance of Clean Energy? B.B. Rath (Naval Research Laboratory, USA)

The discovery that gas hydrates (also called clathrate hydrates) can crystallize (Figure 1) as a solid by the combination of water and several types of gases exposed to low temperatures and elevated pressure goes back to the 1800s. French researchers were the first to report the formation of methane, ethane, and propane hydrates.1 Results of these studies remained as scientific novelties until the mid-1930s, when it was discovered in Germany that gas hydrates forming as solids above 0°C in gas pipelines blocked the flow of natural gas.2 This observation initiated a flurry of activities both in Europe and in the

United States to find various inhibitors to prevent hydrate formation in gas transmission lines. During the mid-1960s, it was recognized that nature, over millions of years, has deposited vast amounts of methane hydrates along most of the continental margins in the ocean sediments, as well as along the permafrost regions in Alaska, Canada, and Russia.3 Figure 2 shows the presence of methane hydrate deposits in the ocean sediments and in the permafrost regions of the world. These deposits are byproducts of microbial decomposition of organic matter or of Earth’s geothermal heating distributed worldwide where temperature and pressure are