Multi-measurement approach for establishing the base of gas hydrate occurrence in the Krishna-Godavari Basin for sites cored during expedition NGHP-02 in the offshore of India

The 2015 National Gas Hydrate Program of India's second expedition, NGHP-02, acquired logging and coring datasets for constraining the base of the gas hydrate occurrence zone (deepest GH) and the theoretical base of gas hydrate stability zone (BGHS). These data are used here for two primary goa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marine and petroleum geology 2019-10, Vol.108 (C), p.296-320
Main Authors: Waite, W.F., Ruppel, C.D., Collett, T.S., Schultheiss, P., Holland, M., Shukla, K.M., Kumar, P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Base of hydrate occurrence
Base of hydrate stability
Hydrate-bearing sediment
Krishna-Godavari basin
Methane hydrate
NGHP-02
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The 2015 National Gas Hydrate Program of India's second expedition, NGHP-02, acquired logging and coring datasets for constraining the base of the gas hydrate occurrence zone (deepest GH) and the theoretical base of gas hydrate stability zone (BGHS). These data are used here for two primary goals: to constrain the deepest occurrence of gas hydrate relative to predicted stability limits and the observed BSR, and to characterize the nature of the contact between gas hydrate-bearing sediment and the underlying gas hydrate-free sediment. A consensus depth for the deepest GH is derived for each NGHP-02 coring site from downhole indicators of gas hydrate occurrence obtained from well-log electrical resistivity and acoustic data, pressure core compressional wave velocity measurements, and conventional core measurements of anomalously low temperatures. To establish the theoretical BGHS, models of gas hydrate phase stability with depth are compared with downhole temperature profiles derived from: 1) assuming a constant geothermal gradient consistent with downhole temperature measurements, and 2) assuming constant heat flow using a geotherm through the downhole temperature measurements and incorporating thermal conductivity calculated from borehole logging data. Although the deepest NGHP-02 GH occurrences are controlled at several sites by a lithologic boundary, most sites have deepest GH occurrences within a single coarse-grained lithology. Cutoffs within a single coarse-grained lithology, which occur for the primary NGHP-02 Area B gas hydrate reservoir, will inhibit pore-pressure drawdowns used to extract methane from gas hydrate as an energy resource. •Sparse, shallow temperature measurements tend to cause predictions of the base of gas hydrate stability to be too shallow.•At meter-scale lengths, clay-content is anti-correlated with resistivity-based estimates of gas hydrate saturations.•Limited methane availability is a primary control on the vertical extent of the observed gas hydrate distributions.
ISSN:0264-8172
1873-4073
DOI:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2018.07.026