JOIDES Resolution confirms gas hydrates presecnce in KG basin

New Delhi, June 20 (UNI) The drillship 'JOIDES Resolution' today confirmed the presence of of sizable reserves of good quality gas hydrates in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basins.

According to an official release issued here, the results from the second site in KG basin have shown the presence of 128 Meter thick gas hydrates layer indicating massive to dispersed gas hydrates.

''This marks a very significant development in the country.

The Research and Development work is in progress to develop a commercially viable technology to produce natural gas from gas hydrates, which is so far not available anywhere in the world.

Development of this unconventional source of energy could meet a large part of our ever increasing demand for gas in the decades to come'', Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora said.

The gas hydrate samples have now been physically collected for the first time in India, making it the third country in the world to do so in its deepwaters, after the US and Japan.

These samples have been collected at the surface, implying that there are massive hydrates present in the subsurface, which is also corroborated with the help of logging while drilling (LWD) and Wireline logs.

The drilling, coring, logging of gas hydrate bearing sediments in the Indian offshore areas started on May 5, 2006, under the National Gas Hydrates Programme (NGHP), utilising R and D drillship 'JOIDES Resolution' through an agreement between DGH and a US Consortium.

The drilling programme would be completed in four legs in about 115 days, at a budgeted cost of about 36 million dollars being funded by OIDB.

The results of this R and D effort have started coming in and are better than expectations.

The gas hydrate signatures were earlier seen in the seismic data and through other geoscientific data studies carried out in selected areas, where drilling/coring activity is now in progress.

The drilling ship was flagged by the Petroleum Minister of the Mumbai coast on April 30, this year.

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