Regal Resources has entered into an agreement to acquire Enhanced Biogenic Methane. EBM has secured an exclusive Australian and Northern Ireland licence to biogenic methane enhancement (BME) technology, which has been granted from the Western Research Institute of Wyoming, who are at the forefront of this technology globally. This transaction enables Regal to focus on applying the EBM technology at its Oak Park Pilot Site, located within EL 4507 to the west of Melbourne where there is evidence of substantial quantities of brown coal to which the EBM technology may have a commercial application.
Regal holds 1407 km2 of tenements in Victoria (EL4507 and EL4510) containing approximately 10,000 Mt of non-JORC brown coal. It is proposed that a trial of the EBM technology will commence in the near term upon regulatory approvals being granted. Over the last six months substantial work has been undertaken on the approval process, and it is anticipated the trial will commence during October 2010. The trial, initially focused on an existing well at Oak Park, will involve the stimulation of microbes within the 20 m thick coal seam to produce methane gas. The trial will cover three phases to examine specific aspects of the technology, with each phase planned to run for a minimum of 45 days.
The BME technology involves speeding up the natural biogenic process that produces methane known as coal seam gas. Biogenic methane accounts for 20% to 40% of the total methane reserves on earth. Major sources include coal seam gas in the Surat Basin in Queensland, Australia and Powder River Basin in Wyoming, USA. BME works by artificially stimulating the naturally occurring micro-organisms called methanogens that break down the hydrogen and carbon from the coal and emit methane. BME technology works best on lignite (brown coal), low rank black coals and oil shale. This is because of their high volatiles and hydrogen content, which if all converted to methane would yield gas quantities several times that of traditional coal seam gas.
Application of BME is expected to be via the same drilling techniques used in the coal seam gas industry. One of the advantages of BME over coal seam gas is that the groundwater is an aid to the process and is required to maintain anaerobic (oxygen fee) conditions. Also, as only a small amount of the coal is converted to methane, there is no surface subsidence as can happen with underground mining or underground coal gasification.
BME has been demonstrated to produce methane real time in both bench scale trials (lignite and black coal) and field tests (black coal). Although at the early stages, the technology development is starting to attract significant attention. One of the other proponents of BME, Luca Technologies of Colorado, raised $75 million in late 2008 and has acquired more than 1,000 depleted CSG wells in the USA. It believes BME technology can bring these wells back on production.