Natural gas transportation: NGH or LNG?

In this work, based on a process for conversion of natural gas to Natural Gas Hydrate (NGH), the amortised total capital investment, operation and maintenance costs and total cost for production of NGH are compared with those of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) method. The economic parameters for marine transportation of NGH and LNG from Asaluyeh port in south of Iran to different potential gas markets, as a case smdy, have been obtained. Also, the required NGH and LNG ships and their operating costs for different gas markets were obtained. It was found that the cost of transporting natural gas by LNG for the cases investegated in this work is cheaper than for the NGH method.