Natural gas transportation and storage by hydrate technology: Iran case study

Different technologies have been applied to store and transport natural gas. Such technologies and their applications are dependent on factors such as scale of development and distance from markets. In this work, the economic evaluation of natural gas hydrate (NGH) chain including production, transportation and re-gasification was carried out in an industrial scale with a capacity of about 2.6 million cubic meters of hydrate per year. The competitive cases for transporting NGH were determined in terms of truck and railroad transportation within the country as well as exportation to other countries by shipping. The price of natural gas for the end user was also estimated for these cases.