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funding, with industry participation. The desire to conduct
tests of extended duration requires facilities and infrastruc-
ture that are accessible year-round. The most cost-effective
of such locations are in the Arctic, close to areas of existing
industry activity (see Text Boxes 3.2), and ultimately, learn-
ing derived in the Arctic will be tested in offshore settings.
Besides the inherent complexities associated with offshore
operations, a particular challenge in this setting is the shal-
low sub-sea-floor depth and structural complexity of the can-
didate reservoirs (Konno
et al.
2010; Nagakubo
et al.
2011).
Given the current status of gas hydrate production research
and the challenges and complexities of proposed future re-
search and development efforts, it is unlikely that meaning-
ful production of gas from gas hydrates will occur within the
next decade.