Gas Hydrate Exploration and Interpretation Analysis

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263). This special issue belongs to the section "Geophysics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 April 2022) | Viewed by 4242

Special Issue Editors

Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Interests: marine geology and geophysics; gas hydrate; seismic and well log analyses
MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Interests: gas hydrates; basin modeling; petroleum modeling
CAGE-Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate, Department of Geosciences, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
Interests: fluid flow; gas hydrate; methane; geohazards; numerical modeling
School of Earth Sciences, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Interests: gas hydrates; seabed fluid-flow; carbon capture and geological storage; high-resolution 2D/3D pore-structure imaging techniques; Shale gas characterization; Igneous intrusions; submarine volcanic ridges

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

The current Special Issue of Geosciences focuses on recent advances in gas hydrate exploration and interpretation, emphasizing their economic, geo-hazard and environmental significance. We invite inter-disciplinary manuscript submissions on the offshore and onshore (e.g., permafrost, subglacial) gas hydrate systems using remote-sensing geophysical data, geochemical and laboratory analyses, well log data, sediment cores and modelling. We particularly encourage submissions focusing on the preferential gas hydrate formation in marine sediments (e.g., why do we find gas hydrates in certain places but do not find them in other geologically similar systems?). An important and often debated question here is the source of gas in both shallow and deep gas hydrate systems. Gas origin (microbial versus thermogenic) is typically inferred from the gas chromatographic and isotopic analyses, yet interpretation of these data can be equivocal, particularly in systems dominated by long-range fluid flow below the gas hydrate stability zone. Furthermore, we invite studies on causes and controls of gas transport through the gas hydrate stability zone and near-seafloor hydrate systems posing geo-hazard risks. We encourage regional as well as global hydrate studies with a focus on leveraging diverse datasets using novel techniques (e.g., machine learning approaches) and applying these datasets for exploration and quantitative analyses of gas hydrate accumulations.

Dr. Alexey Portnov
Dr. Ewa Burwicz-Galerne
Dr. Sunil Vadakkepuliyambatta
Dr. Srikumar Roy
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • Gas hydrate
  • Fluid flow
  • Methane
  • Marine sediments
  • Geo-hazard
  • Energy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 12956 KiB  
Article
Seismic Attribute Analyses and Attenuation Applications for Detecting Gas Hydrate Presence
by Roberto Clairmont, Heather Bedle, Kurt Marfurt and Yichuan Wang
Geosciences 2021, 11(11), 450; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/geosciences11110450 - 31 Oct 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2770
Abstract
Identifying gas hydrates in the oceanic subsurface using seismic reflection data supported by the presence of a bottom simulating reflector (BSR) is not an easy task, given the wide range of geophysical methods that have been applied to do so. Though the presence [...] Read more.
Identifying gas hydrates in the oceanic subsurface using seismic reflection data supported by the presence of a bottom simulating reflector (BSR) is not an easy task, given the wide range of geophysical methods that have been applied to do so. Though the presence of the BSR is attributed to the attenuation response, as seismic waves transition from hydrate-filled sediment within the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ) to free gas-bearing sediment below, few studies have applied a direct attenuation measurement. To improve the detection of gas hydrates and associated features, including the BSR and free gas accumulation beneath the gas hydrates, we apply a recently developed method known as Sparse-Spike Decomposition (SSD) that directly measures attenuation from estimating the quality factor (Q) parameter. In addition to performing attribute analyses using frequency attributes and a spectral decomposition method to improve BSR imaging, using a comprehensive analysis of the three methods, we make several key observations. These include the following: (1) low-frequency shadow zones seem to correlate with large values of attenuation; (2) there is a strong relationship between the amplitude strength of the BSR and the increase of the attenuation response; (3) the resulting interpretation of migration pathways of the free gas using the direct attenuation measurement method; and (4) for the data analyzed, the gas hydrates themselves do not give rise to either impedance or attenuation anomalies that fully differentiate them from nearby non-hydrate zones. From this last observation, we find that, although the SSD method may not directly detect in situ gas hydrates, the same gas hydrates often form an effective seal trapping and deeper free gas accumulation, which can exhibit a large attenuation response, allowing us to infer the likely presence of the overlying hydrates themselves. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gas Hydrate Exploration and Interpretation Analysis)
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