The National Research Council conducts the National Energy Technology (NETL) Methane Hydrates Fellowship Programs (MHFP) in cooperation with sponsoring federal laboratories, research organizations, and accredited universities.

The National Research Council, through its Associateship Programs office, conducts a national competition to recommend and make awards to M.S., Ph.D., and postdoctoral level candidates.

The objectives of the Programs are (1) to provide postgraduate students and postdoctoral candidates opportunities for career development, largely of their own choice in the Methane Hydrates field that are compatible with the interests of the sponsoring laboratories and universities, and (2) to contribute thereby to the overall efforts of NETL in their support in the development of Methane Hydrate Science.

For postgraduate students, the Programs provide an opportunity for concentrated research or career development in association with selected members of the permanent professional laboratory or university staff, often as a climax to formal career preparation.

Participating laboratories and universities receive a stimulus to their programs by the presence of bright, highly motivated, recent graduates. New ideas, techniques, and approaches to problems contribute to the overall professional climate of the laboratories. Indirectly, the fellowships also make available to the broader research community the excellent and often unique facilities that exist in federal laboratories and universities.

The Methane Hydrate Fellowship supports highly qualified postgraduate students in the advancement of Methane Hydrate science. In particular; interest is in advanced geological and geophysical projects that will provide improved methods and tools for real time, remote or in situ detection, characterization, and appraisal of gas hydrates occurrence and distribution in nature as well as their production potential as an energy resource.

Interest is in projects that provide an improved understanding of the processes that control hydrate stability and their potential role in global climate including formation of Methane Hydrates in permafrost and seafloor settings and the fate of dissociated hydrates through sediments, the water column, and into the atmosphere.