Investigation of depressurization with wellbore heating method for artificial methane hydrate cores

Methane hydrates are considered as new natural gas resources. For long time commercial gas production, it is needed to increase gas production efficiency. In this study, we carried out hydrate dissociation experiments by depressurization with wellbore heating method for artificial sandy cores. Contribution of wellbore heating was small for hydrate dissociation. This is coursed that the production fluid flow and heat flax of wellbore heating is opposed direction each other. However main energy of wellbore heating was used to increase dissociation gas and water temperature in flow line. Therefore, the wellbore heating method is needed to consider not only the point of production enhancement but also flow assurance of gas production.