Evidence of Gas Emissions from Permafrost in the Russian Arctic

Abstract

The active emission of gas (mainly methane) from terrestrial and subsea permafrost in the Russian Arctic has been confirmed by ample evidence. In this paper, a generalization and some systematization of gas manifestations recorded in the Russian Arctic is carried out. The published data on most typical gas emission cases have been summarized in a table and illustrated by a map. The tabulated data include location, signatures, and possible sources of each gas show, with respective references. All events of onshore and shelf gas release are divided into natural and man-caused. and the natural ones are further classified as venting from lakes or explosive emissions in dryland conditions that produce craters on the surface. Among natural gas shows on land, special attention is paid to the emission of natural gas from Arctic lakes, as well as gas emissions with craters formation. In addition, a description of the observed man-caused gas manifestations associated with the drilling of geotechnical and production wells in the Arctic region is given. The reported evidence demonstrates the effect of permafrost degradation on gas release, especially in oil and gas fields.

New Catastrophic Gas Blowout and Giant Crater on the Yamal Peninsula in 2020: Results of the Expedition and Data Processing

“…This creates additional possibilities for the sub-horizontal migration of fluids (water and gas), some of which come out to the ground surface and into the atmosphere through numerous taliks that exist below thermokarst lakes and large rivers. During the drilling of many wells, gas was released from the upper permafrost horizons (in the intervals of 20-130 m) with a flow rate of hundreds and even thousands of cubic meters per day, and in some cases, the flow rates reached 10,000-14,000 m 3 /day [6,10,15,42,77,79,82]. The longest gas emission was observed from the 72-80 m interval with a reservoir pressure of 8 atm in the well No.…”

“…In the course of studies based on the interpretation of RS data, it was proven that before the blowouts and explosions of gas at the sites of the craters, there were positive relief forms that looked very similar to the perennial heave mounds (PHMs) widely known in various regions of the Arctic [6,8,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]40,42,43,[47][48][49][50][51][52]57,58,60,63,68]. In total, according to RS data, 7185 PHMs were found on Yamal alone [8,31,34].…”

“…This required research into possible models of the PHMs' formation, as well as their destruction during the explosion. Various models have been proposed and substantiated in the papers of the OGRI RAS authors [6,8,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]68] and other scientists [40,42,43,47,[49][50][51][52]57,58,76].…”

“…In August 2020, an expedition to survey this object was carried out. In addition to the staff of the OGRI RAS, the expedition was attended by specialists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, who also have experience in the research of similar objects [12,16,[40][41][42][43]76]. The purpose of this article was to report the preliminary results of research on the C17 crater of gas blowout.…”

Mapping Arctic Lake Ice Backscatter Anomalies Using Sentinel-1 Time Series on Google Earth Engine

“…Geologic methane accumulated in sub-surface hydrocarbon reservoirs (e.g., conventional natural gas reservoirs, coal beds and buried organics associated with glacial sequences or methane hydrates), previously sealed by permafrost or glaciers acting as a cryosphere cap, can seep into the atmosphere through lake sediments and the water column [2]. Large quantities of geological lake seeps are especially assumed in Western Siberia [13][14][15][16].…”