Feb

8

Methane Is the Future

February 8, 2010 | 2 Comments

Its as safe a declaration as can be made, methane, the main part of natural gas is a major future fuel.
Case Item No. 1:
In the U.S. alone, the combination of horizontal drilling and reservoir fracturing services becoming more affordable has moved up the U.S. reserve by 35% in existing fields of 2007 to 2009.  Fracking [...]

Jan

13

A Major New Natural Gas Find

January 13, 2010 | 4 Comments

McMoRan, a mid sized independent oil company out of New Orleans led a partnership of investors to a significant quantities of natural gas in a 5-mile-deep well it drilled in about 20 feet of water at McMoRan’s Davy Jones prospect just 10 miles off the Louisiana coast.
For those not watching the close up to shore [...]

Nov

24

A Method to Get Natural Gas to Transportable Methanol

November 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

A lot of natural gas is lost, burned off or simply too remote to get to market.  Several efforts have made press releases, but most are non-scalable or not cost effective.  Yet, the lure of so much fuel and energy in remote natural gas is a strong enticement.
A catalyst manufactured by the American chemist Roy [...]

Oct

27

More Natural Gas Hydrates and Glimmer of Research & Development Hope

October 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

The Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) has announced that natural gas hydrate samples had been discovered in northwestern China’s Qinghai province, the first land-based find of this kind in China.  This adds to the North American land based known locations.
The discovery was made at an altitude of 4,062 meters above sea level in [...]

Jul

29

Getting Natural Gas Faster

July 29, 2009 | 3 Comments

Sometimes you have to love the big corporation, not often, but sometimes there are breakthroughs. ExxonMobil’s Randy Tolman, the company’s project coordinator for the Piceance Basin has invented a new method of fracturing, or “fracing,” the underground layers of rock and sand to unlock natural gas.  ExxonMobil aims to export the new process to the [...]

Jun

16

Can Government Make a Disaster From Nothing at All?

June 16, 2009 | 2 Comments

IHS Global Insight of Massachusetts under a contract from the American Petroleum Institute has rolled out its report about the consequences of a Federal takeover of the regulations from states overseeing the oil and gas well finishing process called “hydraulic fracturing.”
Before we start, hydraulic fracturing is packing water, some solvents, and strong sand and special [...]

Jun

1

Lots More Natural Gas – A Lot More

June 1, 2009 | 3 Comments

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) and a group of U.S. and international energy industry companies under the management of Chevron have completed the first ever drilling project with the goal to collect geologic data on gas-hydrate-bearing sand reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Results, stunning, [...]

Apr

29

The Good News in Natural Gas

April 29, 2009 | 3 Comments

There is a lot of natural gas out there in the ground and stored away in methane hydrates. Today we’ll look into the land based new production skills that are releasing a lot of natural gas that used to be uneconomic as it is locked into rock that is so low in porosity that it [...]

Mar

26

More Natural Gas Than Ever Thought Possible

March 26, 2009 | 1 Comment

Monday March 23 saw 24 papers about natural gas hydrates, the frozen methane locked up in frozen deep cold water, at the American Chemical Society’s 237th National Meeting in Salt Lake City.
Known as gas hydrate, it is a frozen form of natural gas that can burst into flame at the touch of a match and [...]

Sep

8

A New Role for Micro Organisms

September 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Microorganisms have been used for making ethanol for centuries. The yeast has a long history. Biology has blessed or cursed humanity with bacteria that makes methane and methanol, an alarm for global warming as ruminates like cows pass methane in prodigious quantities – and people do too. The old garbage piled up and buried is [...]