Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering

Volume 35, Part A, September 2016, Pages 1167-1179

Review article

Drilling of gas hydrate reservoirs

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2016.09.058
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Abstract

With the consumption of conventional hydrocarbon reserves and advancement in drilling technology, recently there is
a high interest in gas hydrates in the world. Due to lack of experience and sensitive nature of gas hydrates, drilling in
gas hydrate reservoirs were considered as risky. However, recent drilling data in gas hydrates shows that successful
drilling operations in gas hydrate reservoirs are possible with some special measurements such as specially designed
drilling fluid and cement slurry etc. In this study, open-hole riserless drilling, drilling with riser in marine environment,
logging while drilling, drilling fluid, cement and coring systems used in hydrate exploration are explained.

Introduction

With the consumption of conventional oil and gas reservoirs, recently unconventional gas reservoirs such as gas
hydrates and shale gas have become very popular. Moreover, these reservoirs are considered as less harmful for the
environment (Kok and Merey, 2014). Gas hydrates are ice-like structures formed at high pressure and low temperature
conditions. Basically, gas molecules (methane, ethane, propane, etc.) are trapped in the cage structure formed by water
molecules. The latticed water molecules are attached by solid hydrogen bonds at low temperatures and high pressures.
The gas and water molecules are tightly bonded by van der Waals force on the other hand (Sloan and Koh, 2008,
Carroll, 2009, Ye and Liu, 2013, Merey and Sınayuç, 2016b). Although natural gas might include methane and other
impurities such as ethane, propane etc., 99% of gas hydrate reservoirs includes 100% methane (Kvenvolden, 2002,
Demirbas, 2010, Collett et al., 2015). Methane gas hydrates are commonly observed in marine environment and
permafrost regions. However, it is considered that approximately 99% of methane (CH4) hydrates are found in marine
environment (Max et al., 2013, Ruppel, 2014). As shown in Fig. 1, gas hydrates are mostly located on near shore area in
marine environment because these regions are organic rich and temperature, pressure conditions are appropriate for
gas hydrate formation.

Since 1970s, many gas hydrate reservoir calculations have been done in the world with very unlimited data such as
sediment type, organic content, gas hydrate stability zone, temperature, pressure, etc. Hence, there are big differences
in these reserve calculations because of different assumptions made by different scientists (Johnson, 2011, Chong et al.,
2016). However, even the most conservative estimates place the amount of gas contained within hydrate deposits at
least two times larger than the global estimates of conventional natural gas of 4.4 × 1014 standard m3 (Koh et al., 2012).
There are mainly four production methods for gas hydrates: depressurization, thermal injection, carbon dioxide (CO2)
injection and chemical injection Depressurization method is mainly to decrease reservoir pressure below hydrate
equilibrium pressure and dissociate gas hydrates. Thermal injection is applied by increasing reservoir temperature with
hot water or steam and disrupt hydrate equilibrium conditions. CO2 hydrate is the most stable compared to CH4
hydrate so there is a replacement of CO2 and CH4 and this provides CH4 production (Chen et al., 2015a, Xu and Li, 2015,
Abbasov et al., 2016, Merey and Sınayuç, 2016c). Recently, many gas hydrate exploration and production projects have
been implemented because of their abundance potential (Arora et al., 2015, Merey and Sınayuç, 2016a). Several
production wells and injection wells in Mallik Field, Canada have been drilled. Depressurization and thermal injection
production methods were tested in this field (Takahashi et al., 2001, Collett et al., 2009). Similarly, the first offshore gas
hydrate well was tested in 2013 by depressurization production method and 120,000 m3 CH4 was produced in 6 days in
Nankai Field, Japan (Saeki, 2014). CO2 injection production method was firstly tested in Ignik Sikumi Field, Alaska by
injecting 77.5% N2 and 22.5% CO2 and CO2-CH4 replacement was observed. During the test, 855 Mscf of CH4 and 1136.5
bbl water were produced (Schoderbek et al., 2013, Kvamme, 2016). As well as production tests from gas hydrate
reservoirs, some countries such as USA, Japan, India, Korea, China and Turkey are currently conducting gas hydrate
exploration activities, mainly, seismic survey, drilling exploration wells, coring, logging etc. (Boswell et al., 2012, Saeki,
2014, Sahay and Johnson, 2014, Singh and Prakash, 2015, Ryu et al., 2013, Liu et al., 2015, Max and Johnson, 2016).

Previously, there are many reviews on the gas hydrate production methods, marine gas hydrate geochemistry, and
seismic surveys (Kvenvolden, 1995, Koh and Sloan, 2007, Makogon, 2010, Sun et al., 2014, Xu and Li, 2015, Chong et al.,
2016). However, there are not any review summarizing drilling activities in this area. Therefore, in this review, it is
aimed to summarize and discuss the drilling operations in gas hydrate reservoirs.

Section snippets

Gas hydrate well location selection

During the exploration of gas hydrate reservoirs, seismic surveys, gas seepages, gas plumes, gas hydrate mounds in
marine environment, temperature and pressure profiles are evaluated (Majumdar et al., 2016, Beaudoin et al., 2014,
Barnard et al., 2016). According to the results of these exploration studies, possible drilling locations are determined.
Temperature and pressure profile of marine environment and permafrost settings are quite important to understand
the thickness of gas hydrate…

Drilling in gas hydrate reservoirs

In the world, currently, there is much experience of drilling for conventional oil and gas explorations both in offshore
and onshore environment. However, especially, drilling gas hydrate wells is still immature. Hence, scientists mostly
evaluate the drilling in gas hydrates with only little data related to gas hydrates and their guesses. There is a common
idea that drilling gas hydrate reservoirs is quite risky. Some of these risks are listed as (Yakushev and Collett, 1992,
Maurer, 2000, Tan…

Drilling fluid selection in gas hydrate wells

Drilling fluid design is very crucial in all drilling operations. Different than conventional oil and gas wells, in gas
hydrate wells, there is also a risk of dissociating gas hydrate which might cause slope failure, wellbore collapse, kick,
and other health and safety problems (Maurer, 2000, Liang et al., 2014, Fink, 2015). As well as the main functions of
drilling fluid such as cutting transports, etc., drilling fluid in gas hydrate well should not affect gas hydrate section.

During riserless…
Casing cementing in gas hydrate wells

Casing and cementing operations are quite important for the wellbore stability and especially for conventional oil and
gas reservoirs, wells might produce more than 50 years so successful casing and cementing operations are necessary
(Bourgoyne et al., 1986). During gas hydrate explorations for scientific purposes, mostly riserless open-hole wells are
drilled and no casing is inserted to these well because the main objectives of these wells are to get log data and core
data of marine sediments…

Coring in gas hydrates

LWD method is very important to characterize the sediments where there is gas hydrate potential and mostly BSR lines
are used to determine the drilling locations in marine environment. However, only LWD and BSR data is no enough to
characterize gas hydrate in marine sediments. In order to design a production well and to select production methods,
many core data are needed. These core data are mainly pressure, temperature, permeability, porosity, pore water
chlorine content, gas hydrate…

Discussion about drilling in gas hydrate wells

For many years, gas hydrates haven been seen as a treat for conventional and oil well drilling and transmission of gas
and oil with pipelines. However, with the decline of conventional oil and gas reserves, gas hydrates are considered as a
future potential energy resource because of its vast amount of gas hydrate reserves especially in marine sediments.
Compared to conventional oil and gas reservoir drilling and production activities, there is almost no experience in gas
hydrates. In this…

Conclusion

With the consumption of conventional gas reservoirs and development of drilling, logging and coring technology, many
countries and scientists have focused on the gas hydrate explorations because there are enormous gas reserves in gas
hydrates. Although there are many challenges in gas hydrate exploration, recently many successful gas hydrate wells
have been drilled in marine environment and permafrost. Almost one decade ago, it was considered that drilling in gas
hydrate reservoirs was quite…

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