Frozen crystals packed with concentrated natural gas and buried 2,000 feet below the permafrost on Alaska's North Slope could become the next major domestic energy source, according to an assessment released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey. The study finds that in the North Slope, frozen methane-and-water crystals known as hydrates contain as much as 85.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. That's enough to heat 100 million homes for as long as 10 years, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said.| Democrats to make extracting hydrates out of bounds in 5 .. 4 .. 3 .. |
Government research is beginning to show that it may be possible to extract hydrates using depressurization, a technique used to get at more conventional fuel sources. Simply boring into the ground may be enough to change the pressure to extract it, said Steve Rinehart, a spokesman for British Petroleum in Alaska. Or the pressure could be changed by pumping.
Gas hydrates exist all over the world, including offshore, but a combination of cold and pressure makes them especially prevalent in the Arctic, where there's also an existing oil and gas infrastructure to study them.