China’s marine combustible ice investigation and exploration technical system formed

On January 14, the south China sea natural gas hydrates drilling project in Guangzhou has been accepted. According to academicians and experts in the assessment team Li Tingdong, Chen Yuchuan and Zhang Hongtao, after completing all the specified field tasks, the project also fulfilled a major breakthrough in gas hydrate development. By this time, China has developed a drilling and exploration technical system for marine gas hydrates, laying a solid technical foundation for massive marine gas hydrate resources evaluation and exploration.

It is reported that this technical system is in the leading position in the world, mainly consisting of investigation evaluation and exploration.

As to investigation evaluation techniques, mature hydrate investigation techniques have come into being. In view of hydrate metallogenic prospects and investigation in hydrate-related landform, sedimentary minerals, geochemistry and seism, a series of mature “geological, geophysical and geochemical” investigation techniques were formed which has become the main techniques in marine gas hydrate regular exploration and been efficiently applied in practice; independently-developed efficient hydrate exploration technology was applied and based on favorable hydrate metallogenic zones, independent researches on seismic identification by natural gas hydrate and other relevant technologies were carried out. The hydrate samples obtained through drilling fully proved the effectiveness of our exploration technology. Besides, a number of hydrate detecting techniques were developed. On the basis of hydrate ore body target prioritizing and hydrate ore body pattern and internal structure depiction, gas hydrate ore body 3D seism and high-frequency seabed seism detecting techniques were developed.

Exploration techniques include: drilling vessel dynamic positioning and drilling heave compensation technique, logging while drilling technique, pressure maintaining and coring technique and field testing technique. (Yu Defu and Chen Huiling) (Translated by TLRHVC)

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