Australia has substantial undeveloped gas reserves and many pools of methane that are currently considered “stranded” but could be economic to develop as technologies advance.

Geoscience Australia calculates that the country has about 144 trillion cubic feet of discovered sales gas, although about 52Tcf of this is considered subeconomic.

The drive to develop these reserves will be strong. Gas is more economically viable than renewable energy or nuclear power, and is the cleanest, or least dirty, fossil fuel.

In large power plants, gas-fired power generation produces about a third of the greenhouse gas emissions of coal-fired power generation – between 0.3 tonne per megawatt and 0.4t/MW.

“Insofar as gas will replace coal, CO2 emissions will be reduced by about half, even without carbon capture and storage,” say CSIRO researchers David Whitford and James Pullar in a paper to be presented at this year’s APPEA conference.

Gas-fired power could become even cleaner if significant advances are made in geosequestration technology. It is well recognised that the drive to develop “clean coal” technology is one of the main drivers behind the geosequestration push, but there is also a need to find ways to deal with carbon dioxide from some of Australia’s major gas fields.

“With growing worldwide pressure for reductions in CO2 emissions, the development of Australia’s gas industry is likely to be dependent on the application of carbon capture and storage technologies,” Whitford and Pullar write.

“Many of Australia’s large but as yet undeveloped gas resources are characterised by high CO2 contents.”

High CO2 levels are particularly prevalent in the North West. For example, Gorgon contains about 17% CO2.

Technologies that could help deal with high CO2 levels include: systems for stripping CO2 from gas streams; geosequestration technologies; and methanol production.

Methanol production could offer a way to commercialise stranded gas fields and fields with high CO2 content, according to Australian companies MEO Australia and Coogee Resources.

CO2 in amounts of up to 28% in the feedstock actually helps methanol production because it enables the gas reformer size to be reduced by about 30%. MEO is moving to develop the CO2-rich Evans Shoal field for methanol production.

Meanwhile, Perth-based privately held company Coogee Resources is considering producing methanol from stranded gas fields using a floating processing, storage and offtake vessel.

According to Coogee, the gas could be taken from the reservoir and processed on the FPSO without having to lay pipelines.

The liquefied natural gas sector will also see big technological advances in the coming decades, according to Whitford and Pullar.

“There are opportunities to address issues related to small-scale, small footprint offshore processing for remote and associated gas,” they write.

One industry identity who strongly agrees with this proposition is Ian Tchacos, managing director of Nexus Energy, a mid-cap explorer with big LNG ambitions.

“My view is that the future of LNG will be floating processing facilities,” Tchacos said.

“There’s no reason to bring the gas onshore. You’re just bulldozing and creating a large environmental impact, which exposes you to environmental and Native Title approval problems. It’s much better to have a more low-impact facility that can be moved.”

An LNG plant that could be moored for years, then mobilised, would also make stranded gas reserves exploitable, according to Tchacos.

“You could start looking at developing 1 and 2Tcf fields,” he said.

But Tchacos says he has no idea what kind of LNG facility Shell Australia, Nexus’ farm-in partner to the Echuca Shoals gas field, is considering building.

“Shell is very motivated and aggressive in its LNG ambitions, but it isn’t the only innovator – there will be a lot of exciting developments in the next decade,” he said.

Onshore gas production will also see big innovations, according to Whitford and Pullar.

Much of this research will concentrate on the rapidly growing coal seam methane sector.

“Exploration, the identification of sweet spots, and, potentially, the role of micro-organisms in enhancing methane saturation are important,” Whitford and Pullar write.

“Drilling and completion technologies to minimise damage to reservoir behaviour is another important area.”

The distribution of all forms of gas will also need to be examined, according to Whitford and Pullar.

The expected growth in demand for minerals processing will come largely in remote areas, requiring additional pipeline infrastructure and incurring high capital, construction and operating costs.

“To attract the necessary investment, there will need to be offsets available through technology developments such as cluster development synergies, infrastructure provision and the potential to use lean/unprocessed gas,” they write.

Meanwhile, in urban areas opportunities exist to reduce emissions and costs through distributed or embedded power generation – production of power at point of use or at point of grid constraint.

These forms of generation, which use technologies such as microturbines and fuel cells, hugely reduce transmission losses.

This article only scratches the surface of the issues raised in Whitford and Pullar’s paper, which also examines gas for alternative fuels, the push to develop platform-free production, gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids technologies and knowledge-based energy technology.

“The technology challenges identified mainly relate to the need to cut the costs of exploration, production and processing gas while maintaining a focus on the environmental sustainability of the industry,” they write.

“Although incremental technological improvements can be anticipated, some of the major issues such as exploiting deepwater remote offshore gas that is now stranded economically, may require fundamentally new approaches.”

APPEA 2007’s Trends in gas technologies concurrent session includes four presentations. CSIRO Petroleum researchers David Whitford and James Pullar will outline their take on Australia’s gas future – a research and development perspective; Aker Kvaerner staff will discuss novel offshore LNG solutions; senior CO2CRC staff will discuss Australia’s first geosequestration demonstration project, the Otway basin pilot project; and CO2CRC and Upstream Petroleum staff will present a case study of a carbon dioxide well test.

First published in the March issue of Petroleum magazine