122 When Oil and Water Mix: Understanding the Environmental Impacts of Shale Development II

Monday, 26 September 2016
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Mile High Ballroom 2A/3A

MIGRATION AND FATE OF FUGITIVE METHANE: LESSONS LEARNED THROUGH A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY CONTROLLED METHANE RELEASE EXPERIMENT

Paper number: 122-3
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 2:10 PM – 2:30 PM

Authors

Abstract

Fugitive methane associated with shale gas development became a controversial issue of significant public and scientific concern following a decade of intensive and widespread development. Subsequent research activity has significantly advanced our understanding of both natural and anthropogenic methane in the subsurface. In particular a suite of advanced geochemical and isotopic tracer tools have been developed able to characterize baseline conditions in areas of potential development and delineate sources of CH4 in areas of contested impact. However, very little research has been conducted aiming to characterize migration and fate of fugitive CH4 during and after leakage events, despite such events considered to be likely to continue to occur. Consequently a multi-disciplinary controlled methane release experiment was designed and conducted in order to characterize migration, impacts and fate of fugitive methane in a shallow aquifer system. During the experiment ~50 m3 of methane were injected into a shallow, unconsolidated, phreatic beach-sand aquifer over 72 days. Migration of injected gas was monitored at high resolution spatio-temporally via a combination of aqueous chemistry, microbial characterization, soil gas and surface efflux measurements and geophysical methods over 300 days. Our multi-disciplinary observations give unprecedented insight into the migration, impact and fate of fugitive CH4 during and after a leakage event. Here, key results will be presented and conclusions made which have profound implications for monitoring methodologies and understanding of impacts of fugitive methane.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 7

doi: 10.1130/abs/2016AM-281538

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