by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Sep 26/97) - The Delta permafrost will play home to an experiment that may uncover a vast new reserve of energy not only for the Arctic, but for the world.

A Japanese oil exploration company, Japex Canada Ltd., will conduct a research program early next year in the Mackenzie Delta to study gas hydrates on behalf of the Japan National Oil Corporation.

Gas hydrates are at the cutting edge of fossil fuel exploration. The hydrates are ice compounds of methane and water, trapped at the molecular level not only beneath permafrost, but also under the world's oceans.

The objective of the drilling program undertaken by Japex this winter is to determine whether drilling technologies developed to explore the hydrates for a 1999 program off Japan's coast will operate as specified.

The project will test the newly developed "pressure-temperature coring system," which is a specially designed large-bore drill that extracts actual core samples of the earth below with hydrates inside, and brings them to surface, while keeping temperature and pressure constant so the hydrates don't dissolve.

The program will test the newly developed coring system, refine and assess wireline coring methods, test and evaluate drilling mud, casing and cementing technologies for hydrate saturated sediments and test the hydrates on site and in Inuvik.

The Geological Survey of Canada and the U.S Geological Survey will tag along to co-ordinate the science program. Because gas hydrates break down and evaporate when they reach the surface, a number of studies will be done right on the field, with further studies of extracted core samples carried out at the Inuvik Research Centre.

The test will determine whether hydrates can be harvested using traditional oil and gas extraction technology.

The project will re-enter a 1,100-metre well, the Imperial Oil Mallik L-38 well drilled in 1972. It was chosen because it contains the thickest known layer of gas hydrates in the Delta, with no hydrocarbons to damage the data. The research will be carried out 80 kilometres north of Tununuk Point, west of Tuktoyaktuk near the coast. About 80 kilometres of ice road will be built to the site.

Up to 48 people will be working on the project, including eight scientists. The rig will be brought in this month by barge and moved to site in late January.