Seismic Methods for Exploration and Exploitation of Gas Hydrate

Seismic and rock physics play important roles in gas hydrate exploration and production. To provide a clear cognition of the applications of geophysical methods on gas hydrate, this work presents a review of the seismic techniques, rock physics models, and production methods in gas hydrate exploration and exploitation. We first summarize the commonly used seismic techniques in identifying the gas hydrate formations and analyze the limitations and challenges of these techniques. Then, we outline the rock physics models linking the micro-scale physical properties and macro-scale seismic velocities of gas hydrate sediments, and generalize the common workflow, showing the frequently-used procedures of building models with detailed analysis of the potential uncertainties. Afterwards, we summarize the production techniques of gas hydrate and point out the problems regarding the petrophysical basis and abnormal seismic responses. In the end, considering the geological and engineering problems, we come up with several aspects of using geophysical techniques to solve the problems in gas hydrate exploration and production, hopefully to provide some important clues for future studies of gas hydrate.