• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.227-235
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• 2014

Interest has been growing worldwide in unconventional natural gas that has become an increasingly important source of energy in the world. Unconventional gas development, including shale gas, generally involves a larger environmental impact, compared to conventional gas development, due to its intensity and scale of the operation. There are a growing number of studies on identifying and minimizing the environmental impacts of unconventional gas development. This study aims to examines the current environmental policies and regulatory systems related to the unconventional gas development. The study shows that few environmental regulation exists concerning unconventional gas development, even in the USA where unconventional gas development is most actively pursued. Regulations, however, are being developed based on studies currently underway on health and environmental risks of unconventional gas development and on guidelines designed to reduce the risks. In a world where environmental regulations are ever strengthening, review the environmental regulatory systems and guidelines about unconventional gas need to be established for Korean firms to understand environmental impacts of unconventional gas development they invest or take part in, enabling them to manage and operate gas activities in a way that minimizes environmental damages.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1597-1605
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• 2014

Methane is considered as a next-generation carbon feedstock owing to the vast reserves of natural and shale gas. Methane can be converted to methanol by various methods, which in turn can be used as a starting chemical for the production of value-added chemicals using existing chemical conversion processes. Methane monooxygenase is the key enzyme that catalyzes the addition of oxygen to methane. Methanotrophic bacteria can transform methane to methanol by inhibiting methanol dehydrogenase. In this paper, we review the recent progress made on the biocatalytic conversion of methane to methanol as a key step for methane-based refinery systems and discuss future prospects for this technology.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2021

The hydraulic fracturing developed to improve permeability of tight reservoir is one of key stimulation technologies for developing unconventional resources such as shale gas and deep geothermal energy. The experimental study was conducted to improve disadvantage of hydraulic fracturing which has simple fracture pattern and poor fracturing efficiency. The fracturing experiments was conducted for tight rock using various fracturing fluids, water, N2, and CO2 and the created fracture pattern and fracturing efficiency was analyzed depending on fracturing fluids. The borehole pressure increased rapidly and then made fractures for hydraulic fracturing with constant injection rate, however, gas fracturing shows slowly increased pressure and less fracture pressure. The 3D tomography technic was used to generate images of induced fracture using hydraulic and gas fracturing. The stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) was estimated increment of 5.71% (water), 12.72% (N2), and 43.82% (CO2) respectively compared to initial pore volume. In addition, permeability measurement was carried out before and after fracturing experiments and the enhanced permeability by gas fracturing showed higher than hydraulic fracturing. The fracture conductivity was measured by increasing confining stress to consider newly creating fracture and closing induced fracture right after fracturing. When the confining stress was increased from 2MPa to 10MPa, the initial permeability was decreased by 89% (N2) and 50% (CO2) respectively. This study shows that the gas fracturing makes more permeability enhancement and less reduction of induced fracture conductivity than hydraulic fracturing.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.41-45
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• 2014

New technologies and techniques to extract natural gas and gas liquids, as well as petroleum, from shale rock have greatly altered expectations for North America's capacity to produce energy products. As a result of innovations such as hydraulic fracturing, some government, industry, and academic observers have predicted that the United States will soon become energy self-sufficient and possibly become a net exporter of natural gas and petroleum. This paper will cover literature review and measure the potential impacts on economic growth and development. Fracking, renewable energy are just a few of the things that have reshaped the energy picture over the past 20 years, how much it will change in the next 20 years and the impacts on the economy will be discussed.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.188-191
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• 2008

There have been many methods for producing natural gas from gas hydrate reservoirs in permafrost and sea floor sediments. It is well knownthat the depressurization should be a best option for Class 1 gas hydrate deposit, which is composed of tow layers: hydrate bearing layer and an underlying free gas. However many of gas hydrate reservoirs in sea floor sediments are classified as Class 2 that is composed of gas hydrate layer and mobile water, and Class 3 that is a single gas hydrate layer. The most appropriate production methods among the present methods such as thermal stimulation, inhibitor injection, and controlled oxidation are still under development with considering the gas hydrate reservoir characteristics. In East Sea of Korea, it is presumed that the thick fractured shale deposits could be Class 2 or 3, which is similar to the gas hydrate discovered offshore India. Therefore it is needed to evaluate the possible production methods for economic production of natural gas from gas hydrate reservoir. Here we would like to present the production of natural gas from gas hydrate deposit in East Sea with industrial flue gases from steel company, refineries, and other sources. The existing industrial complex in Gyeongbuk province is not far from gas hydrate reservoir of East Sea, thus the carbon dioxide in flue gas could be used to replace methane in gas hydrate. This approach is attractive due to the suggestion of natural gas productionby use of industrial flue gas, which contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emission in industrial complex. As a feasibility study, we did the NMR experiments to study the replacement reaction of carbon dioxide with methane in gas hydrate cages. The in-situ NMR measurement suggeststhat 42% of methane in hydrate cages have been replaced by carbon dioxide and nitrogen in preliminary test. Further studies are presented to evaluate the replacement ratio of methane hydrate at corresponding flue gas concentration.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2011

The low caloric LNG, which didn't meet the gas interchangeability of Korea, has been imported from 2005 winter season. Amount of this LNG imports has been increased from year to year. In the near future, very low caloric LNG (calorific value ${\leq}$ 9,500 kcal/$Nm^3$) such as CBM, Shale LNG will be imported large amounts. For this reason, we need a method for monitoring live calorific values(CV) of LNG in each storage tank to supply gasified LNG with interchangeable CV at LNG receiving terminal. This study was conducted to develope the method for measuring the live CVs of LNG in each storage tank using LNG densitometer. For this purpose, the accurate correlation between CV and density of LNG was derived and the uncertainty of this method was evaluated and also the measuring system for CVs was constructed at LNG receiving terminal. To verify this method, the results of measurement using this method were compared with the field data of LNG analysis and the results showed that the deviations were 0.17~0.47%.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.551-561
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• 2014

Natural gas is the world's fastest-growing fossil fuel, with consumption increasing from 113 trillion cubic feet(Tcf) in 2010 to 185Tcf in 2040. While conventional natural gas streams from the earth relatively easily, unconventional gas finds are more difficult to develop and more costly to produce. Right now, there are six main types of unconventional gas, including deep gas, gas-containing shale, coalbed methane(CBM), geopressurized zones, Arctic and subsea hydrates, and tight gas. Tight gas refers to natural gas reservoirs locked in extraordinarily impermeable, hard rocks(sandstone, siltstone or carbonate sedimentary rocks). In this study, we analyzed total 375 papers(2000-2014) of tight gas by country, institution, international cooperation etc.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.197-206
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to ensure microseismic data acquisition technique for hydraulic fracturing imaging at the site of shale gas development. For this, microseismic data acquisition was performed during hydraulic fracturing and artificial blasting at a site bearing shale layers. Measured microseismic event data during the hydraulic fracturing have the very small amplitude of 0.001 mm/sec ~ 0.003 mm/sec and the frequency contents of 5 Hz ~ 20 Hz range. Meanwhile microseismic event data acquired during artificial blasting have the bigger amplitude (0.011 mm/sec ~ 0.302 mm/sec) than hydraulic fracturing event data and their frequency contents have the range of 5 Hz ~ 2 kHz. For microseismic data acquisition design, the selection of appropriate instrumentation including sensors and the recording system, the determination of sensor array and the deployment range were investigated based on the theoretical data and field application experiences.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.58-69
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• 2013

This paper presents production data analysis for two production wells located in the shale gas field, Canada, with the proper analysis method according to each production performance characteristics. In the case A production well, the analysis was performed by applying both time and superposition time because the production history has high variation. Firstly, the flow regimes were classified with a log-log plot, and as a result, only the transient flow was appeared. Then the area of simulated reservoir volume (SRV) analyzed based on flowing material balance plot was calculated to 180 acres of time, and 240 acres of superposition time. And the original gas in place (OGIP) also was estimated to 15, 20 Bscf, respectively. However, as the area of SRV was not analyzed with the boundary dominated flow data, it was regarded as the minimum one. Therefore, the production forecasting was conducted according to variation of b exponent and the area of SRV. As a result, estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) increased 1.2 and 1.4 times respectively depending on b exponent, which was 0.5 and 1. In addition, as the area of SRV increased from 240 to 360 acres, EUR increased 1.3 times. In the case B production well, the formation compressibility and permeability depending on the overburden were applied to the analysis of the overpressured reservoir. In comparison of the case that applied geomechanical factors and the case that did not, the area of SRV was increased 1.4 times, OGIP was increased 1.5 times respectively. As a result of analysis, the prediction of future productivity including OGIP and EUR may be quite different depending on the analysis method. Thus, it was found that proper analysis methods, such as pseudo-time, superposition time, geomechanical factors, need to be applied depending on the production data to gain accurate results.