Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 14/02) - An international research team is drilling on Richard's Island near Tuktoyaktuk as part of a $14-million study into the properties of a frozen form of natural gas.

Natural gas hydrates are a highly compressed mixture of methane and water found in large quantities under the arctic permafrost and beneath the world's oceans.

One litre of gas hydrates yields 164 litres of methane or natural gas, but so far, no one knows how to extract them commercially.

Methane is considered the cleanest-burning of the fossil fuels.

The research, being carried out by the Geological Survey of Canada and several international partners, will help scientists better understand the properties of gas hydrates, and may one day lead to commercial extraction.

Japan, one of the main countries involved, hopes to make use of its offshore deposits of gas hydrates within the next 15 years, says Hideaki Takahashi, a Japanese engineer in Inuvik with the Japan Petroleum Exploration Company.

"We are sure that we have certain amount of gas hydrates, but the big issue is how to produce it economically."

In Canada, development of gas hydrate reserves could take place in the same time frame, or later, depending on whom you ask.

On Dec. 25, project workers drilled the first of three research wells on the Mallik L-38 exploratory site tapped by Imperial Oil in 1972. It sits atop what is believed to be one of the largest deposits of natural gas hydrates in the world.

"We have a pretty ambitious science program," says Scott Dallimore, chief scientist with Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey. "We want to better understand how gas hydrates behave under different circumstances."

At the end of this month, about 50 scientist from Canada, Japan, the United States, Germany and India will arrive in Inuvik to conduct work at the drill site and at the Aurora Research Institute.

Four German researchers are already working at the drill site in hopes of coming up with a temperature profile of the wells using state-of-the-art fibre optics.

Among other studies, researchers will conduct production tests, turning the gas crystals into regular methane gas while still in the ground, making it easier to bring to the surface.

The current project is a followup to research conducted in 1998 at the same site, which confirmed the existence and size of the deposit.

The drilling is scheduled to wrap up by March 10, but core samples drawn from the site will continue to be examined in laboratories around the world in the months to come.