Effective-Medium Models for Marine Gas Hydrates, Mallik Revisited
Abstract
Hertz-Mindlin type effective-medium dry-rock elastic models have been commonly used for more than three decades in rock physics analysis, and recently have been applied to assessment of marine gas hydrate resources. Comparisons of several effective-medium models with derivative well-log data from the Mackenzie River Valley, Northwest Territories, Canada (i.e. Mallik 2L-38 and 5L-38) were made several years ago as part of a marine gas hydrate joint industry project in the Gulf of Mexico. The matrix/grain supporting model (one of the five models compared) was clearly a better representation of the Mallik data than the other four models (2 cemented sand models; a pore-filling model; and an inclusion model). Even though the matrix/grain supporting model was clearly better, reservations were noted that the compressional velocity of the model was higher than the compressional velocity measured via the sonic logs, and that the shear velocities showed an even greater discrepancy. Over more than thirty years, variations of Hertz-Mindlin type effective medium models have evolved for unconsolidated sediments and here, we briefly review their development. In the past few years, the perfectly smooth grain version of the Hertz-Mindlin type effective-medium model has been favored over the infinitely rough grain version compared in the Gulf of Mexico study. We revisit the data from the Mallik wells to review assertions that effective-medium models with perfectly smooth grains are a better predictor than models with infinitely rough grains. We briefly review three Hertz-Mindlin type effective-medium models, and standardize nomenclature and notation. To calibrate the extended effective-medium model in gas hydrates, we use a well accepted framework for unconsolidated sediments through Hashin-Shtrikman bounds. We implement the previously discussed effective-medium models for saturated sediments with gas hydrates and compute theoretical curves of seismic velocities versus gas hydrate saturation to compare with well log data available from the Canadian gas hydrates research site. By directly comparing the infinitely rough and perfectly smooth grain versions of the Hertz-Mindlin type effective-medium model, we provide additional insight to the discrepancies noted in the Gulf of Mexico study.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFMOS13C1540T
- Keywords:
-
- 3004 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS / Gas and hydrate systems