Ancient geologic escape hatches mistaken for tube worms

…In an area approximately one and a half times the size of the City of Calgary, scientists discovered that what was previously identified as fossilized tubeworms were actually fossilized tubular escape hatches for methane, a major constituent of natural gas.

…Although the results may be surprising, the ramifications are even more so.





The fact that methane gas can escape from a thick shale seafloor may demonstrate that there needs to be more research done on the integrity of geologic seals in petroleum reservoirs earmarked for CO2 injection,” says Krause who is a professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary. “It shows that under different geologic circumstances gases that are present in underground formations can indeed seep out, and all the effort expended in trying to remove CO2 from our atmosphere would be lost.”

In addition, there are vast volumes of methane gas naturally trapped beneath the seafloor in the form of gas hydrates. If these hydrates were to be destabilized, methane bubbles could release large quantities of microparticles to the ocean bottom. This release would cloud up the deep ocean and the effect would be akin to fouling up the atmosphere with a dense smog. Given that the ocean bottom is one of the last frontiers of petroleum exploration, further research will be needed to properly plan for the location of production and containment facilities on the seafloor. Installation of these facilities has the potential to destabilize underlying hydrates.

“These 70-million-year-old tubular escape hatches south of Denver, Colorado, provide a glimpse to processes that are occurring in the ocean bottoms at present,” says Krause.

EurekAlert