Research progress of natural gas hydrate development technologies

The development and utilization of natural gas hydrate resources cannot be realized without the support of efficient development technologies, which include the technologies promoting the in-situ decomposition of natural gas hydrate and the applicable natural gas hydrate well drilling and completion technologies. In this paper, natural gas hydrate development technologies were investigated sufficiently. It is indicated that the current natural gas hydrate development methods mainly include thermal method, depressurization method and carbon dioxide replacement method, and the production wells are mainly single vertical wells. The application of distributed optical fiber temperature measurement system, downhole thermobarometer, wellbore sand control device, downhole gas-liquid separator and other support technologies ensures the real-time monitoring of the in-situ decomposition of natural gas hydrate and the effective separation of methane gas in the process of production testing. Finally, the new natural gas hydrate development technologies in exploration were illustrated and summarized from the aspects of in-situ heating of natural gas hydrate reservoir, utilization of geothermal energy, transplantation of existing oil and gas development technologies and recycling of the mining products of natural gas hydrate.