An international team of experts from Japan, the United States, Canada, Germany and India will soon begin the world's first experiment to extract natural gas from the vast deposits of frozen methane lying deep underground, project sources said Friday.
Participants in the project will conduct the experiment between early December and March in the Mallik district of Canada's Northwest Territories, near the Arctic Ocean.
Frozen methane or methane hydrate, also known as burning ice, is a combination of methane gas and water. Large amounts of methane gas exist in the Arctic permafrost and deep ocean sediments. If the gas can be efficiently and safely extracted from great depths, it could be a huge source of energy.
The team will use a well that is about 1,200 meters deep and has already been dug, the sources said.
They will conduct the experiment by hammering a pipe into the hydrate layer to lower the internal pressure.
According to Peter McGrail, of the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the purpose of the experiment is to study the basic technology for efficiently extracting gas from the hydrate layer in a stable manner without causing the ground to soften.
The experiment will be conducted with the intention of subsequently probing deeper below the ocean bed, according to the sources.