Natural Gas Hydrate: Environmentally Responsive Sequestration of Natural Gas

Abstract

Pleistocene glacial sediments will predominantly host NGH, and possibly only those to depths of no more than 1 km. Older sediments will likely be buried too deeply to host NGH. Each glacial episode would have produced a suite of sediments related to the onset and glacial maximum period and especially during the onset of the following interglacial period when the melting of the ice cap would produce large volumes of water that would strongly affect sediment winnowing and transport. These periods of maximum water flow would be likely to produce the clastic sandy sediments that would be ideal hosts of high-grade NGH deposits in the deeper continental shelves and the continental slopes. In addition, sea level variation would have strongly controlled the position of the shoreline positions during the glacial and interglacial cycles. Sediments within about 1.2 km depth below the seafloor comprise the exploration zone for NGH and related gas deposits. The continental margins of the Arctic Ocean have been divided into 5 regions for analysis of the degree to which they could provide optimal NGH host sediments to suitable depositional environments.