Gas hydrates in both arctic permafrost regions and deep marine settings can occur at high concentrations in sand-dominated reservoirs, which have been the focus of gas hydrate exploration and production studies in northern Alaska and Canada, and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeastern coast of Japan, in the Ulleung Basin off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and along the eastern margin of India. Production testing and modeling have shown that concentrated gas hydrate occurrences in sand reservoirs are conducive to existing well-based production technologies.
Because conventional production technologies favor sand-dominated gas hydrate reservoirs, sand reservoirs are considered to be the most viable economic target for gas hydrate production and will be the focus of most future gas hydrate exploration and development projects. For both Arctic and marine hydrate-bearing sand reservoirs, it is generally accepted there are no apparent technical roadblocks to resource extraction; the remaining resource issues deal mostly with the economics of hydrate extraction.
