AAPG/EMD and North American Hydrate CODATA Regional Meeting

Little America Hotel, Wyoming Ballroom, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 13, 2003

Chairman Timothy (Tim) S. Collett, opened the meeting and welcomed about 26 participants from North America and Japan.  The CODATA meeting was held as the major part of the third hydrate committee meeting of the Energy and Minerals Division (initialized April 2000) of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).  Dr. Art Johnson, the Co-Chair of the Committee; ran the meeting in 2002, while Tim was tending the Mallik Production Test Well in Canada.

The Hydrate Sessions the following day (May 14^th) were reviewed.  Thirteen posters were presented in the morning, and ten oral papers were presented in the afternoon.  The topics were hydrates in Alaska, Blake Ridge, Brazil, Canada, Cascadia Margin, Gulf of Mexico, India, Norway, and Russia.

Chairman Collett announced that there would be a proposal for a Hedberg Conference on hydrates in late summer 2004, entitled “Hydrates: Energy Resource Potential and Associated Geologic Hazards.”  The conference venue will probably be Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the topic will be basic geologic controls, producible energy resources, and seafloor stability.  This timing is beyond the confidentiality period for Leg 204, for Mallik 3, and perhaps beyond that for the recent Anadarko well.  The Anadarko well was shut off on April 15, but will resume in 2003.

Art Johnson made an appeal for volunteers for members of the Hydrate Energy Resources Working Group.  The task of this group is to formulate a formal position statement on energy of gas hydrates from producible reserves.  The U.S. National Hydrate Advisory Committee has had a critical concern about hydrates an climate change – particularly to define critical unknowns and technology development.

News from the floor:

1. Abstracts are due 9/11/03 for the 2004 AAPG Meeting (4/18-21/03) in Dallas.
2. There will be a final meeting on Mallik 3 12/8-10/03 at Hotel New Otani, in Chiba.
3. The Mallik Three Final Scientific Proceedings will be published in Summer 2004.
4. F. Rack says the Joint Oceanographic Institute (JOI) Leg 204 repository has 50m of core under high pressure and 35m of core in liquid nitrogen.  Investigators might obtain some of the core by submitting a sample request.
5. The 5^th Intrntnl Hydrate Conference will be in Trondheim, Norway June 13-17, 2005.
6. Dr. Pulak Ray (MMS) indicated that MMS wanted by 2005, to have a brainstorming session on the economically recoverable hydrates.

CODATA Hydrate North American Regional Meeting

Dr. John Ripmeester introduced CODATA to the group and discussed the hydrate project within CODATA, chaired by Dr. Fedor Kuznetsov.  He indicated that CODATA was sponsored by the International Council for Science, with the objective of sharing data, particularly for developing countries.  Previous committee meetings were in Paris (4/01 and 4/03), Yokohama (5/02), and New Brunswick, Canada 10/02.

John presented the committee members and discussed regional meetings to be held around the world.  Of particular interest was the Russian Regional meeting, with 102 people, resulting in the formation of the Russian Gas Hydrate Association.

Dr. Dendy Sloan then introduced the GASHYDAT database, using the PowerPoint presentation for the Baku Meeting provided by Dr. Dimitrov.  The photocopied technical portion of the final report was given to each meeting attendee, along with a basic explanation of the database.

Finally, Dendy presented the meeting a handout on the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) Hydrate Literature database, which was incorporated into EndNote^®.  The database has 5,575 literature citations (from the years 1778 through 2002).  The EndNote^® aspect of the database has the below advantages, among others:

1. It can import from online databases such as Georef, Scifinder, and Web of Science.
2. It has a macro-driver enabling incorporation of references easily in Microsoft Word.
3. Easily accessible by author, journal, year, issue, page, keyword, and abstract.

Each attendee was offered a copy of the CSM Hydrates Literature Database, with the stipulation that each recipient would (a) obtain a copy of EndNote^® to allow access to the database, (b) correct the list of his/her own references, and (c) help correct the database by providing a copy of an addition to the database by 12/03.  Table 1 lists the response to this commitment, with topic and timing.  Sloan committed to returning each participant an updated version of the database by the end of the first quarter 2004.