In May 2017, a team of scientists and graduate students from UT Austin's Institute for Geophysics, a unit within the Jackson School of Geosciences, began the first of two ambitious drilling expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico, 150 miles off the Louisiana coast. Their pioneering work, led by Research Scientist Dr. Peter Flemings, is part of a six-year, $80 million project that aims to acquire the first-ever subsurface extraction of methane hydrate from Gulf waters. Though methane hydrate, considered to have enormous potential as an energy source, can be created in a lab, little is known about the substance in its natural state – high-pressure, low temperature places, such as the Arctic permafrost or under the ocean floor. Read more about this groundbreaking research in the September/October issue of Alcalde.
