Future Natural Gas Supplies & the Ultra-Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

www.energypulse.net 3.12.03   Roger Anderson, Director, Energy Research, Columbia University Albert Boulanger, Snr Staff Assoc, LDEO, Columbia Univ. James Longbottom, Director of Ultra-Deepwater Research Initiative, TEES, Texas A&M University Ronald Oligney, Director of Engineering Research Development and Adjunct Professor, Cullen College of Engineering , University of Houston

Abstract Both the gas industry and United States government face tremendous challenges to deliver the supply required by the increasingly gas-dependent electricity demand in the United States of the 21st century. The U.S. will be hard pressed to build the large number of Liquid Natural Gas terminals that provide the only significant alternative to North American supply increases. Huge new reserves of gas must be brought to market to offset the natural exponential decline in known gas production from within the borders of the United States. We must explore, discover, appraise, develop, and exploit the vast new gas reserves discovered in waters deeper than 1500 meters in the ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico if we are to have any hope of meeting this demand increase. In addition, we must deliver to market new gas from deep and tight reservoirs on land, coal bed methane, and Alaska or we may have to ration gas between heating and power, particularly in the Northeast. No one wants to be responsible for such a choice.