Distribution and origin of dissolved methane, ethane and propane in shallow groundwater of Lower Saxony, Germany

More than 90% of Germany's domestic natural gas production and reserves are located in Lower Saxony, North Germany. Recently, research has been intensified with respect to unconventional shale gas, revealing a large additional resource potential in northern Germany. However, many concerns arise within the general public and government/political institutions over potential groundwater contamination from additional gas wells through hydraulic fracturing operations. In order to determine the naturally occurring background methane concentrations, similar to 1000 groundwater wells, covering similar to 48 000 km(2), have been sampled and subsequently analyzed for dissolved methane, ethane and propane and the isotopic composition of methane (delta C-13). Dissolved methane concentrations cover a range of similar to 7 orders of magnitude between the limit of quantification at similar to 20 nl/l and 60 ml/l. The majority of groundwater wells exhibit low concentrations (<1 mu l/l), a small number of samples (65) reveal concentration in the range >10 ml/l. In 27% of all samples ethane and in 8% ethane and propane was detected. The median concentration of both components is generally very low (ethane 50 nl/l, propane 23 nl/l). Concentrations reveal a bimodal distribution of the dissolved gas, which might mirror a regional trend due to different hydrogeological settings. The isotopic composition of methane is normally distributed (mean similar to -70 parts per thousand vs PDB), but shows a large variation between -110 parts per thousand and +20 parts per thousand. Samples with delta C-13 values lower than -55 parts per thousand vs PDB (66%) are indicative for methanogenic biogenic processes. 5% of the samples are unusually enriched in C-13 (>25 parts per thousand vs PDB) and can best be explained by microbial methane oxidation. According to a standard diagnostic diagram based on methane delta C-13 values and the ratio of methane over the sum over ethane plus propane ("Bernard"-diagram) less than 4% of the samples plot into the diagnostic field of typical thermogenic natural gases. However, in most cases only ethane has been detected and the remaining less than 15 samples demonstrate an uncommon ratio of ethane to propane compared to typical thermogenic hydrocarbons. These data do not suggest a migration of deeper sourced gases, but a thermogenic source cannot be excluded entirely for some samples. However, ethane and propane can also be generated by microbial processes and might therefore represent ubiquitous background groundwater abundances of these gases. Nevertheless, our data suggest that due to the exceedingly low concentration of ethane and propane, respective concentration changes might prove to be a more sensitive parameter than methane to detect possible migration of deeper sourced (thermally generated) hydrocarbons into a groundwater aquifer. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.