Last summer, about 250 people attended an international meeting on hydrate research in Salt Lake City. Pitt's Holder, who chaired the meeting, recalls the days when only a few scientists did hydrate research. We'd have international meetings with 10 or 12 people. Now we've gone from maybe five to 500 scientists. Indeed, when they were first recognized 70 years ago, gas hydrates were an industry nuisance, an icy sludge that fouled natural gas pipelines.
Gas hydrates form when methane and water are together under pressure.
The combination of pressure and the stabilizing effect of methane on water molecules allows the icy substance to form at temperatures above the normal freezing point of water. The water freezes into a crystal lattice that absorbs, concentrates and traps the methane. The only difference is the lattice wouldn't exist without the methane. Just how methane can be economically extracted from gas hydrate deposits isn't clear. The simplest way, Holder suggested, might be to drill a conventional well into a natural gas reservoir that is underneath a cap of hydrate.