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COVER—A scenic view of platform Houchin, operated by Pacifc Operators Offshore LLC (Carpinteria, Califor-nia). Houchin is a fxed-production platform located approximately 4 miles off the California coast, in the Santa Barbara Channel. Platform Houchin is actively being used for the recovery of oil and gas on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. (Photo Credit: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.)

NEXT MONTH—KVH advanced technology meeting broadband demands ... Applications for scaled-down sat-com ... Big data management at Port of Rotterdam ... Diver tracking system ... Low-cost inertial sensors to mea-sure subsurface mooring motions ... Conference previews: Clean Pacifc and Undersea Defence Technology.

April 2015, Volume 56, No. 4Visit our website at www.sea-technology.com for online versions of feature articles and news departments.

The editorial staff can be contacted at oceanbiz@sea-technology.com.

10 SHELL MARINE LUBRICANT TECHNICAL SERVICES BRING OPERATING DIVIDENDS Dr. Sara Lawrence (Shell Marine Products) describes monitoring and analysis to improve offshore vessel performance.

15 OFFSHORE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE — Conference Preview

19 THE ARCTIC AS THE NEXT GLOBAL ENERGY POWERHOUSE Kell Sloan (Pro-Oceanus Systems) discusses the potential of methane hydrates to hold the key to energy independence.

25 AUVSI’S UNMANNED SYSTEMS — Conference Preview

27 2015 TO DEFINE US OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS ACTIVITY FOR REMAINDER OF DECADE Randall Luthi (National Ocean Industries Association) explores how the offshore leasing program and seismic survey permitting could shape the future.

33 OCEANS’15 MTS/IEEE GENOVA — Conference Preview

35 MANEUVERING UNDER THE ICE Gina Millar and Linda Mackay (International Submarine Engineering Ltd.) review AUV development in the Arctic.

39 ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE POST-HURRICANE SEASON Yvette Schmiz (INTEGRA Services Technologies Inc.) explains decommissioning tools for the aftermath of natural disasters.

43 DIFFERENTIAL PRESSURE TRANSDUCERS FOR HAZARDOUS LOCATIONS Karmjit Sidhu (American Sensor Technologies Inc.) provides an overview of how sensors can remotely monitor gas and chemical leaks.

49 GPS ERROR REJECTION IMPROVES ACCURACY OF OFFSHORE PLATFORM WATCH CIRCLE Kevin Delaney (BMT Scientifc Marine Services) demonstrates how a Kalman flter-based technique prevents false alarms.

51 ERRORS IN TRACKING SURFACE CURRENTS WITH DIFFERENT FLOAT GEOMETRIES Dr. Águeda Vázquez (University of Cádiz, Spain), Dr. Francisco Criado-Aldeanueva (University of Málaga, Spain) and Paz Rotllán García analyze wind drag effect of Lagrangian drifters.

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www.sea-technology.com April 2015 / st 19

Fart jokes aside, methane isn’t all that exciting. But for energy-hungry nations such as Japan and India, methane

could be the key element to developing national energy in-dependence. Methane in the form of methane hydrate, a crystalline form of natural gas found at the bottom of oceans and in the Arctic permafrost, will within the next 20 years reshape the global geopolitical landscape of energy.

At room temperature, a solid chunk of methane hydrate can be lit with a single match, producing intense heat. Colloquially known as “fre ice,” there is an estimated 20 quadrillion (20 x 1015) cubic meters of the substance lying several hundred meters below sea level, scattered along continental slopes and in the Arctic permafrost. According to the U.S. Geological Sur-vey, the enormous worldwide reservoirs of methane hydrate potentially contain more energy than all previously discov-ered conventional oil and gas reserves combined.

As mind-blowing as the numbers seem, until recently methane hydrate had never been seriously considered as a viable source of energy. According to oil and gas industry professionals, methane hydrates are considered a nuisance as the substance clogs up natural gas pipelines, disrupting fow. Since the 1940s, natural gas pipeline operators have spent considerable portions of their operating budgets de-vising ways to get rid of chunks of methane hydrate that form in areas where the pipeline has been exposed to cold temperatures.

Methane may be the butt of any number of jokes, but as the smallest and simplest molecule in the Alkane family, this saturated hydrocarbon is found in nearly every crude oil and natural gas. In fact, according to Canada’s largest natural gas distributor, Enbridge (Calgary, Canada), natural gas is 95 percent methane.

Why Does Methane Get a Bad Rap?At standard pressure and temperature, methane is an

odorless and colorless gas that contains only two elements—carbon and hydrogen—and is essentially insoluble in water.

Yet as scientists investigating pipeline blockages discovered, when CH

4 and water combine at cold temperatures (around

25°C) and pressures (30 to 50 bar) found at 300 to 500 meters ocean depth, methane gas can be trapped in ice-like structures called methane clathrates. At the molecular

level, these methane clathrates, or gas hydrates, consist of meth-ane molecules surrounded by tight cages of interlocking water molecules. The hydrates contain large amounts of gas in a rela-tively small area; for example, 1 cubic meter of hydrate can hold

around 164 cubic meters of methane and 0.8 cubic meters of water.

As a Fuel Source, Methane Is No Longer a Laughing Matter

This is not to say that extracting methane gas from meth-ane hydrates is a walk in the park. There are a multitude of technical challenges, and until recently it has generally been considered that other sources of fossil fuels—conventional oil and gas and more recently shale oil and gas—have been easier and cheaper to access. But that may be changing.

In 1998, the Mallik Gas Hydrate Production Research Well became the frst site dedicated to drilling gas hydrates bearing deposits. Located in the pristine beauty of the Ca-nadian Beaufort Sea, the Mallik Gas Hydrate site has been the site of extensive gas hydrate research and development studies, including a 2008 proof of concept that showed that, with some modifcations for the unique properties of gas hydrates, production from a gas hydrate reservoir can be achieved using the same completion and production meth-ods used in conventional oil and gas industries. Since the proof of concept, Japan and India have taken the lead in methane hydrate research, with the goal of fnding extract-able deposits and developing ways to extract methane eco-nomically.

A big breakthrough came in March 2013, when Tokyo-based Japan Oil, Gas, and National Metals Corp. (JOGMEC) announced that they had successfully extracted fuel from a

The Arctic as the Next Global Energy PowerhouseMethane Hydrates May Hold the Key to Energy IndependenceBy Kell Sloan

The Mini-Pro CH4 sensor.

20 st / April 2015 www.sea-technology.com

sive to exploit. The feld and product development experi-ence that the Pro-Oceanus team has with Arctic research is proving to be valuable to researchers who are searching for reliable methods of locating gas hydrates in the sediments of permafrost regions and other marine sediments.

While a number of methods, including direct sampling via drilling, have been used to detect and quantify resource potentials, in-situ dissolved gas sensors offer both an ex-tremely accurate and comparatively inexpensive option. Re-cently, Pro-Oceanus Mini-Pro CH

4 sensors have been used

to detect the existence and saturation of gas hydrates at far less cost or potential environmental impact than moving a drilling rig into place.

Working with researchers from CSnet International and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Pro-Oceanus supplied two prototype Mini-Pro CH

4 sensors that were used to map methane clouds in the

Nankal Trough. To measure dissolved methane concen-tration during ROV dives, the Mini-Pro CH

4 sensors were

subsea bed of methane hydrate in the Pacifc Ocean. With that single announcement, the geopolitical landscape of en-ergy production and distribution started to change.

Discovering useable methane hydrate deposits is still a work in progress, but Pro-Oceanus Systems, based in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, realizes the potential that methane hydrates have as a new energy source for countries lacking access to conventional oil and gas resources. Led by Dr. Bruce Johnson, the inventor of a patented method to ac-curately measure in-situ dissolved gas, Pro-Oceanus’s team of highly skilled research scientists and engineers work with leading environmental researchers and offshore energy op-erators to address the challenges of researching the effects of climate change on the ocean environment and develop products to detect in-situ dissolved gases for use in indus-trial applications.

Developing Solutions for Arctic In-Situ Dissolved Gas Research

Through strategic partnerships with organizations such as the National Oceanography Centre, Woods Hole Oceano-graphic Institute, the U.S. Geological Survey and NOAA, Pro-Oceanus has been in the forefront of Arctic and Ant-arctic research and pioneered the development of sensors especially designed to measure—with an extremely high degree of accuracy, stability, and reliability—dissolved car-bon dioxide in Arctic and Antarctic waters.

Many known deepwater methane hydrate deposits, such as the Blake-Bahamas Plateau off the Carolinas, are very di-lute or spread across relatively thin layers over wide areas, making them both diffcult to accurately assess and expen-

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www.sea-technology.com April 2015 / st 21

mounted parallel behind the upper bumper bar of the ROV, allowing for measurements of highly variable meth-ane concentrations. Research within the Nankal Trough is expected to give helpful insights into the formation and occurrence of natural gas hydrates in one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet.

Field Experience Makes a DifferenceField experience has shown that hy-

drates dissolve quickly when removed from the unique conditions on the ocean bottom, so if changes in ocean bottom pressure or a rise in water tem-perature passes a certain threshold, a sizeable methane deposit could rap-idly decompose and release a large quantity of methane into the water column. While high concentrations of dissolved methane are easy to detect, background CH

4 in the ocean is on the

order of 2 parts per million. Detecting low concentrations of dissolved CH

4

against the backdrop of naturally oc-curring hydrocarbon seeps and vents, melting methane hydrate formations, or in waters that are in near equilib-rium with the surrounding air is no easy task, yet it is vital to understand-ing how a methane release can affect the marine environment.

To detect concentrations of meth-ane, the Pro-Oceanus Mini-Pro CH

4

sensor utilizes a fat, hydrophobic membrane that forms a semi-perme-able phase boundary between liquids and the interior of the instrument. Dis-solved CH

4 gases in the water pass into

an equilibrated internal headspace in the form of a gas stream. The concen-tration of CH

4 is quantifed using an in-

dustry standard nondispersive infrared detector that provides excellent detec-tion limits at good signal-to-noise ra-tios. While CH

4 is a strong absorber of

infrared light, the absorption spectrum of CH

4 makes it diffcult to measure ac-

curately at low concentrations. Field reports about the performance

of the Mini-Pro CH4 sensors have been

encouraging and have helped open up new lines for research and product de-velopment.

However, scouting for useable methane hydrates is only one of any number of issues that need to be re-solved before widespread commer-cial development of methane hydrates can be undertaken. Another stumbling block is fguring out how to acquire the gas from the solid.

Gold mining is a useful analogy for extracting methane hydrates from their locations. While gas hydrates have been recovered in chunks or veins with sediment, gas hydrates don’t just form in thick seams like gold ore. Instead, just like panning for gold, methane hydrate solids can be found in many forms in sedi-ments, and vast reservoirs exist in fne-grained sediments. The methane hydrate can form small pores and ce-ment the grains, but may not be vis-ible to the naked eye.

Because the methane hydrate solid is only stable within a set range of tem-perature and pressures, altering those conditions will liberate the gas from its water cage, allowing for much eas-ier extraction. The Mallik Gas Hydrate Well and JOGMEC researchers have been experimenting with a depressur-ization method, which works by drill-ing a wellbore into a vein of methane hydrate and pumping out the excess fuid. With less surrounding fuid, the pressure drops, prompting the ice-like solid to dissociate.

22 st / April 2015 www.sea-technology.com

What Happens to the EnvironmentIf the Extracted Methane Escapes?

The Arctic is thought by many to be undergoing some of the most dramatic effects of climate change anywhere in the world. The Mallik Gas Hydrate Well may be modest in size, but at 290 meters depth it is also the shallowest known de-posit of methane hydrate and as such is vulnerable to decom-position if there is a subtle warming of the overlying water.

As a greenhouse gas, methane is widely considered to be 20 to 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping solar radiation in the atmosphere. Several scientifc studies have revealed that methane gas has already started to slowly leak from ocean water and soils in the Arctic. Given the en-vironmental conditions in which the hydrates are found and where future hydrate production facilities must be located—the deep sea and the frozen expanses of the Arctic—there is concern that as sediment-containing methane hydrates are inherently unstable, a drilling accident could potentially set off a landslide on the continental slope, sending massive amounts of methane bubbling through the ocean and into the atmosphere.

Recognizing that there exists a large knowledge gap in this feld, Pro-Oceanus’s team is working with researchers to develop a new prototype dual-gas CO

2/CH

4 sensor that may

not only help detect the changes in dissolved gas concentra-tions prior to a massive release of methane but help combat climate change as well.

Recently, ConocoPhillips (Houston, Texas) researchers spent 13 days in Alaska’s North Shore injecting carbon di-oxide and nitrogen into methane hydrate clusters and have shown that carbon dioxide can replace methane within the

ice cage. Once the carbon dioxide is locked in, the water cage binds even tighter, leaving no room for methane to en-ter. The prototype Pro-Oceanus Dual-Gas CO

2/CH

4 sensor

could be used to show that this method of methane extrac-tion for fuel could one day double as a way to sequester and continuously monitor CO

2.

ConclusionRecent advances show that commercial production of

methane hydrates is likely to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. While many challenges remain ahead for research-ers, methane hydrates represent the world’s largest source of extractable fossil energy. As with every other energy re-source, not all of this resource will prove to be recoverable. Yet, as the Pro-Oceanus in-situ dissolved gas technology continues to evolve and sensors to commercially detect and extract gas from hydrates are developed, the abundance of technically challenging to recover but accessible methane hydrates in permafrost will position the Arctic as the next global energy powerhouse.

ReferencesFor a list of references, contact Pro-Oceanus at sales@

pro-oceanus.com. n

Kell Sloan was recently the sales and marketing di-rector at Pro-Oceanus Systems, a Bridgewater, Nova Scotia-based manufacturer of in-situ dissolved gas sensors.