1887
Volume 73, Issue 9
  • E-ISSN: 1365-2478

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Methane is a primary component of natural gas that is the cleanest fossil fuel to support the sustainable development of our society. Electrical survey methods are frequently employed for the exploration of methane that is majorly existing in hydrocarbon systems in the subsurface earth. However, although the quantitative interpretation of electrical survey data relies on the knowledge about the electrical properties of methane bearing rocks, it remains poorly understood about how dissolved methane affects the electrical resistivity of brine and brine‐saturated sandstones. We bridge this knowledge gap by measuring the electrical resistivity of brine and brine‐saturated artificial sandstone samples with varying brine salinity, pore pressure and temperature, as a function of dissolved methane. We find that the dissolution of methane improves the electrical resistivity of brine, and the improvement can be best fitted by a regression equation comprising both a constant and an exponential part. We also find that the improvement in the brine resistivity increases with reducing brine salinity, pore pressure and temperature, where reducing brine salinity, pore pressure and temperature also improve the brine resistivity with no dissolve methane. Experiment on the rock samples shows that the resistivity of the artificial sandstones with dissolved methane behaves in a similar way to the brine resistivity, in terms of its dependence on the brine salinity, pore pressure and temperature. Further analyses demonstrate that the dissolution of methane in brine does not affect the cementation exponent of the rocks, and therefore the rock resistivity with dissolved methane can be predicted on basis of its constant cementation exponent and the brine resistivity with dissolved methane. The results not only reveal the effects of dissolved methane on the electrical resistivity of brine and sandstones at varying conditions but also pave the way to the interpretation of electrical survey data for the better quantification of dissolved methane in the hydrocarbon systems.

© 2025 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers. © 2025 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers.
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2025-11-16
2026-01-15

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Effects of Dissolved Methane on the Electrical Resistivity of Brine and Sandstones at Varying Conditions
Geophysical Prospecting 73, e70107 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2478.70107
/content/journals/10.1111/1365-2478.70107
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