The Symbiotic World of Gas Hydrate Laboratory, Modeling, and Field Research to Assess the Role of Gas Hydrates as an Energy Resource, Geohazard, and as an Agent of Climate Change

The 2018 Natural Gas Hydrate Systems Gordon Research Conference will aim to link the latest advances on our understanding of gas hydrate science at the most fundamental level to the current research issues of scientific, economic and societal relevance. Advanced understanding of the role of gas hydrates as an energy resource, geohazard, and as an agent for climate change requires close integration between researchers working on the latest state-of-the-art in hydrate laboratory measurements, molecular-to-geophysical scale modeling, and field exploration and observatories. Key to this advancement is to explore the overlapping relationships between hydrate related scientific and technical challenges in the different hydrate application areas. Specifically, fundamental science challenges are advancing in the areas of: methane hydrate resource assessment and the global carbon cycle, methane carbon flux in the marine environment, the methane hydrate reservoir responses to natural and anthropogenic perturbations, methane hydrate production technologies and production rates and the effect of reservoir parameters both onshore and in marine systems, and the role of methane hydrates as a geohazard, both operational and due to naturally occurring processes, with associated potential consequences to the environment, and also the technological development of hydrates for storage, transportation, sequestration, and separation. The 2018 GRC will focus on an integrated and symbiotic approach to gas hydrate fundamental research and technological development, encompassing global field programs in the Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, Eastern and Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, and South China Sea, where next generation tools are being implemented and developed for gas hydrate characterization, detection and monitoring, multi-scale modeling from the microstructure to reservoir scales, and system assessments.