Potential Environmental Challenges For Gas Hydrates

During the past 50 years there has been an increasing consciousness of ecological issues related with energy technologies and natural resource utilization. A growing global population requests increasing amounts of energy. Although gas hydrates are considered as one of the alternative energy sources of the future they exhibit possible environmental dangers for both marine ecosystem and atmosphere environment. This paper presents a general introduction about gas hydrates such as their petroleum system the production methods used for gas hydrate production tests and their challenges in geomechanics and well stability in well design and operation in gas hydrate deposits in well testing and interpretation and in monitoring production and geomechanical stability in gas hydrate accumulations. Furthermore it presents the possible environmental issues by taking place naturally or by anthropogenic activities such as drilling and production test operations in different fields globally.