Energy Department Seeks Methane Hydrate Proposals

Deposits can be found under permafrost in Alaska. For extraction research, such landlocked reservoirs provide a stable platform. Larger methane hydrate deposits can be found in sediment below the sea floor.

A Minerals Management Service study in 2008 estimated methane hydrate resources in the northern Gulf of Mexico at 21,000 trillion cubic feet (595 trillion cubic meters), or 100 times current U.S. reserves of natural gas. The combined energy content of methane hydrate may exceed all other known fossil fuels, according to the DOE.

The department calls methane a clean-burning fuel and an important bridge to a time when non-carbon sources will supply more of the nation's energy supply. Since no one has figured out the extraction puzzle, it's uncertain exactly how it could be used.

Critics say burning methane will exacerbate the world's greenhouse gas problem and contribute to global warming. Unburned methane released into the atmosphere is 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 but not as long-lived.

DOE has funded previous methane hydrate research.

The department and industry partners Houston-based ConocoPhillips and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. drilled into a methane hydrate deposit over two Alaska winters ending in spring 2012 in a nearly $29 million extraction experiment.

The research was an application of laboratory studies done by ConocoPhillips and the University of Bergen in Norway indicating that carbon dioxide molecules injected into methane hydrate could swap places with methane molecules, freeing methane to be harvested. The goal was extraction without compromising the integrity of the below-ground ice.