Electromagnetic and seismic investigation of methane hydrates offshore Taiwan — The Taiflux experiment

We report on an electromagnetic and seismic experiments carried out offshore Taiwan in April 2013 in the quest to quantify methane hydrate saturation (TAIFLUX project). The quantification of hydrates is essential to efficiently and cost effectively plan a drilling campaign and for a resource assessment of methane hydrates as an energy source to Taiwan. The work has been carried out in a collaboration of Taiwanese and German scientists and funding organizations. Preliminary and qualitative processing of seismic and electromagnetic data acquired on the Four-Way-Closure accretionary ridge situated on the active margin south-west of Taiwan shows the presence of hydrates and indication that hydrate concentrations are relatively high. We furthermore show that the derivation of quantitative hydrate concentration models from the data is difficult to achieve using either seismic or electromagnetic data alone. Best resolution and certainties in a hydrate concentration model may be achieved if both type of data sets are inverted together to a common model, since both types of data sets carry complementary information.