FROZEN HEAT | Volume 2

CHINA

Guangzhou

HONG KONG

CHINA

MACAU Guangzhou

HONG KONG

MACAU

Pearl River Mouth Basin

Pearl River Mouth Basin

Baiyun sag

Baiyun sag

HAINAN

HAINAN

Figure 2.13: Gas hydrates in the South China Sea. The photograph shows a mud-rich sediment sample acquired from the Shenhu region, South China Sea, in 2007. The sediment shows the frothy texture that results from the dissociation of gas hydrates and the release of gas during sampling and recovery (courtesy, GMGS-01 Science Party).

Given the large resource volumes in settings such as the Blake Ridge and the Shenhu area, pore-filling, fine-grained systems are being rigorously evaluated for their energy resource poten- tial. At present, the consensus is that production of such depos- its is not feasible with existing technologies (Moridis and Sloan

2007; Li et al. 2010). The primary reasons are low hydrate sat- uration, low sediment mechanical strength, lack of confining low-permeability boundaries, and access to abundant free water, which makes depressurization difficult to achieve and limits po- tential production rates to extremely low values.

FROZEN HEAT 52