Using the Dynamics of Bottom Simulating Reflector (BSR) for Prediction of Gas Hydrate Content in Marine Sediments

An approach to prediction of properties of gas hydrate bearing sediments basing on the dynamics of seismic waves reflected from the bottom of the hydrate-containing layer (BSR reflection) without well information is proposed. The approach was tested on synthetic data and demonstrated accurate prediction of gas hydrate content in pore space above the BSR as well as free gas content in pore space below the BSR, with the solution being robust to random noise in the reflection amplitude values. The proposed approach was also tested on the real data from the Black Sea. The results obtained (average gas hydrate content of ~43% and average free gas content of ~1.3% of pore space) match to the previously published results from the adjacent areas.