Conventional natural gas resources

Fascinating communities of methanogens, organisms that can use methane for a food source, have developed on these ice fields. These creatures live under great pressures, at extremely low temperatures, and with no light. But these unusual communities are not the major focus of interest in the methane ice fields. Scientists would like to "mine" this ice to use the methane as a fuel. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the amount of methane hydrate in the United States is worth over two hundred times the conventional natural gas resources in this country ... 

The proven reserves of natural gas in northern Alaska are estimated to be 47 trillion standard cubic feet (TSCF) and represent approximately 25% of the total U.S. reserves. The undiscovered recoverable conventional natural gas resources are estimated to 89 TSCF and additional 500 TSCF are deposited as unconventional gas hydrates. The hydrates are mostly found along the North Slope and adjacent shelf. 

NORTHERN ALASKAN UNDISCOVERED CONVENTIONAL NATURAL GAS RESOURCES (In Trillion SCF)... 

The northern Alaskan undiscovered conventional natural gas resource estimates are given in Table II. It should be noted that the 31.3 trillion SCF of estimated gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) corresponds to an approximately 10% probability. 

The Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin hosts immense unconventional natural gas hydrate reserves that are often co-located with conventional petroleum resources. Osadetz et al. (2005) reported that the conventional resources are co-located with an immense gas hydrate resource estimated between 2.4 x 1012 and 87 x 1012 m3 of raw natural gas. Because the expected decline in conventional natural gas production from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin cannot be replaced by conventional production from frontier regions alone, this immense hydrate resource offers a solution to replace the expected decline in conventional gas reserves. 

In the following, the remaining potential of conventional natural gas will be addressed. As it is beyond the limits of this publication to investigate data discrepancies between different statistics in more detail, the estimates of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) will be used, as they are derived from an assessment of the most important primary sources, and also include resource estimates at country level. Nevertheless, the consequences of different estimates of the EUR of natural gas on the time window of the mid-depletion point will be analysed in Section 3.4.4. 

Figure 3.20 shows the distribution of the EUR, i.e., cumulative production, reserves and resources of conventional natural gas for different world regions. 

Trofimuk, A.A., Cherskii, N.V., Makogon, Y.F., Tsarev, V.P., presented at 11th ASA Conference on Conventional and Unconventional World Natural Gas Resources, Laxenburg, Austria, June 3-4 (1980). 

The presence of sulfur in the feed is also a problem for conventional steam reforming. If the catalyst is not sulfur tolerant, the sulfur will deactivate it (Rostrup-Nielsen, 1984). If the catalyst is "sulfur tolerant", i.e., able to tolerate small amounts of feed sulfur, the sulfur leaves the process as hydrogen sulfide and is likely to cause unacceptable problems downstream. Furthermore many major natural gas resources are "sour," i.e., contain a large percentage of hydrogen sulfide. 

Conventional steam reforming is also restricted to applications in which the size of the locally available supply of hydrocarbon fuel is adequate. Much of the world s total natural gas resources are what is called "static gas," i.e., natural gas resources which are individually so small and so remotely located that they can not be economically pipelined to market. In theory this static gas could be reformed into synthesis gas which could then be made into readily shipped liquids. As discussed by Che and Bredehoft (1995), the minimum size for an economically viable steam reformer based on conventional technology is 5,000,000 standard cubic feet (scf) of hydrogen per day. To give such a minimum size steam reformer a 20-year useful life, the local natural gas resource would need to be relatively large. Studies of the economics of UMR indicate that the process will be satisfactory in small-scale applications. 

The storage of methane as hydrates offers a potentially vast natural gas resource. As to the question of how much hydrate there is right now, there is no definitive answer. However, the worldwide amount of carbon bound in gas hydrates has been estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels originally on Earth. Additionally, conventional gas resources appear to be trapped beneath methane hydrate layers in ocean sediments.22... 

Presently, abundantly available natural gas on the North Slope has no market and most of the produced gas is reinjected. Continued reinjection will ultimately result in high gas/oil ratio in the reservoir thus causing gas recycling problem and production decline. The purpose of this paper is to review the available conventional and unconventional natural gas resources of northern Alaska and their potential uses. 

Commercial natural gas occurrence can be broadly classified into two categories, conventional and unconventional. The conventional category includes natural gas found as associated and non-associated or free gases, including dissolved or solution. The unconventional natural gas resource includes, (1) deep gas, (2) coal bed methane, (3) gas hydrates and (4) gas In shales, (5)... 

Table III represents the northern Alaska natural gas resource summary for conventional as well as unconventional resources. It should be noted that the undiscovered unconventional resource of natural gas in the form of gas hydrates Is only a rough estimate.

It is interesting to examine the regional distribution of the reserves and resources of conventional and non-conventional fossil fuels (Tables 5.1.10 and 5.1.11). More than 40% of current reserves of conventional natural gas and crude oil are located in the Middle East whereas the majority of coal reserves are located in North America, Australia, and Asia. This non-uniform distribution of reserves and resources of fossil fuels will play a strong role in future (struggle for resources etc.) and is a political risk. Most of the reserves and resources of non-conventional fossil fuels are located in North America and in the former USSR. 

Debate continues over just how much natural gas remains in North America. Part of this debate centers on the definition of gas reserves—the amount of gas in a given area that is recoverable and gas resource, the total amount of gas in the ground. Gas production to date, as might be expected, has most commonly been from easy-to-produce conventional... 

This, then, was the scene in which SCP projects were planned in Europe. The need for alternative foods and feedstuffs was clear and, in the UK and elsewhere, oil and gas seemed a plentiful and cheap resource from which to produce them. North Sea gas fields were being exploited and research had shown that natural gas or its derivatives could be used to produce SCP feed of superior protein content to conventional feedstuffs. The economics of such processes seemed very promising. In 1971 the European prices for fish meal and soya meal were 200 and 100 per ton respectively. In 1973 oil price rises and a failure in the Peruvian fish meal supply pushed these prices up to 550 and 300 respectively. With such prices for the major feedstuffs it was considered that SCP feeds could be produced competitively. 

The projected growth scenarios for conventional gas seem justified from the point of view of ultimately recoverable resources, and unlike for oil, no major discrepancies between projected demand and supply are to be expected in the coming decades. An important aspect of the future availability of natural gas, however, is the creation of the necessary infrastructure for the production and subsequent transport of the gas to the customer. The cumulative investments for the gas-supply infrastructure until 2030 are estimated to amount to US 3.9 trillion (IEA, 2006). 

The reserves and resources of conventional NG are comparable in size to those of conventional oil, but global gas consumption is still considerably lower than that of oil. NG is found around the world, but the largest reserves are in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. The proved gas reserves are unevenly distributed around the globe 41% are in the Middle East and 27% in Russia. Global natural gas reserves by countiy are shown in Table 1.9. 

It follows that biomass will play a role complementary to other resources such as electricity from nuclear and hydraulic sources, as well as relatively inexhaustible supplies of natural gas, non-conventional oil and oil sands. The end use of these forms will be dictated by a combination of historic development and technological inertia such that substitution products electricity, methanol, hydrogen, or tonnage chemicals like ammonia, will provide the major outlets for biomass carbon... 

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