Summary Subsurface fluid escape structures are geological features which are commonly observed in sedimentary basins worldwide. Their identification and description have implications for various subsurface fluid flow applications, such as assuring integrity of overburden rocks to geological CO2 storage sites. In this study, we applied 3-D first-arrival travel time tomography to a densely sampled wide-azimuth and wide-angle ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) dataset collected over the Scanner Pockmark complex, a site of active gas venting in the North Sea. Seismic reflection data show a chimney structure underlying the Scanner Pockmark. The objective of this study was to characterise this chimney as a representative fluid escape structure in the North Sea. An area of 6$\times $6 km2 down to a depth of 2 km below sea level was investigated using a regularised tomography algorithm. In total, 182 069 manually picked travel times from 24 ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) were used. Our final velocity model contains compressional wave velocity perturbations ranging from −125 to +110 ms−1 relative to its average 1-D model and compares favourably with a coincident seismic reflection dataset. The tomographic velocity model reveals that the chimney as observed in seismic reflection data is part of a larger complex fluid escape structure, and discriminates the genuine chimney from seismic artefacts. We find that part of the seeping gas migrates from a deep source, accumulates beneath the Crenulate Reflector unconformity at ∼250 m below seafloor (mbsf) before reaching the porous sediments of the Ling Bank and Coal Pit formation at < 100 mbsf. In addition, the model shows that the venting gas at Scanner Pockmark is also being fed laterally through a narrow NW-SE shallow channel. Quantitative velocity analysis suggests a patchy gas saturation within the gas-charged sediments of the Ling Bank and the Coal Pit formations. Confined to the well-resolved regions, we estimate a base case average gas saturation of ∼9 per cent and in-situ gas volume of ∼1.64 $ \times {10}^6\ {{\rm{m}}}^3$ across the Ling Bank and Coal Pit Fm. that can sustain the observed methane flux rate at the Scanner Pockmark for about 10 to 17 years.
<p>Scanner pockmark is an active and continuous methane venting seafloor depression of ~ 900 x 450 m wide and 22 m deep. It is located in the northern North Sea, within the Witch Ground basin where the seafloor and shallow sediments are heavily affected by pockmarks and paleo-pockmarks of various sizes. A seismic chimney structure is present below the Scanner pockmark. It is expressed as a near-vertical column of acoustic blanking below a bright zone of gas-bearing sediments. Seismic chimneys are thought to host connected vertical fractures which may be concentric within the chimney and align parallel to maximum compression outside it. The crack geometry modifies the seismic velocities, and hence, the anisotropy measured inside and outside of the chimney is expected to be different.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>We carried out anisotropic P-wave tomography with a GI-gun wide-angle dataset recorded by the 25 Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBSs) of the CHIMNEY experiment (2017). Travel times of more than 60,000 refracted phases propagating within a volume of 4 x 4 x 2 km were inverted for P-wave velocity and the direction and degree of P-wave anisotropy. The grid is centred on the Scanner Pockmark and has a y-axis parallel to -34<sup>o</sup> N. The horizontal node interval is denser in the zone covered by the OBSs and the vertical node interval is denser near the seabed. A 3 iteration inversion leads to a chi<sup>2</sup> misfit value of 1 and a root-mean-square misfit of <10 ms. The results show a maximum P-wave anisotropy of 5%, and higher degrees of anisotropy correlates well with higher velocities. The fast P-wave velocity orientation, a proxy for fracture orientations, is 46<sup>o</sup> N. The top of the chimney possibly links a bright spot mapped at 270 ms in two way travel time using RMS amplitudes of MCS data, to the surface gas emission. The bright spot corresponds to low tomographic P-wave velocity and anisotropy, suggesting that gas is located in a zone with unaligned fractures or porosity. This observation is in good agreement with early multi-channel seismic data interpretations which suggested that the gas is trapped within a sandy clay layer, the Ling Bank Formation, capped by an upper clay layer, the Coal Pit Formation. In the next step, we will invert the travel-times of reflected phases in order to increase the image resolution.&#160;&#160;</p>
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