Gas hydrates are crystalline substances composed of water and gas, mai
nly methane, in which a solid-water lattice accommodates gas molecules
in a cage-like structure, or clathrate. These substances commonly hav
e been regarded as a potential unconventional source of natural gas be
cause of their enormous gas-storage capacity. Significant quantities o
f naturally occurring gas hydrates have been detected in many regions
of the Arctic, including Siberia, the Mackenzie River Delta, and the N
orth Slope of Alaska. On the North Slope, the methane-hydrate stabilit
y zone is areally extensive beneath most of the coastal plain province
and has thicknesses greater than 1000 m in the Prudhoe Bay area. Gas
hydrates have been inferred to occur in 50 North Slope exploratory and
production wells on the basis of well-log responses calibrated to the
response of an interval in a well where gas hydrates were recovered i
n a core by ARCO and Exxon. Most North Slope gas hydrates occur in six
laterally continuous lower Tertiary sandstones and conglomerates; all
these gas hydrates are geographically restricted to the area overlyin
g the eastern part of the Kuparuk River oil field and the western part
of the Prudhoe Bay oil field. The volume of gas within these gas hydr
ates is estimated to be about 1.0 X 10(12) to 1.2 X 10(12) m3 (37 to 4
4 tcf), or about twice the volume of conventional gas in the Prudhoe B
ay field. Geochemical analyses of well samples suggest that the inferr
ed hydrates probably contain a mixture of deep-source thermogenic gas
and shallow, microbial gas that was either directly converted to gas h
ydrate or first concentrated in existing traps and later converted to
gas hydrate. The thermogenic gas probably migrated from deeper reservo
irs along the same faults thought to have been migration pathways for
the large volumes of heavy oil that occur in the shallow reservoirs of
this area.