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The potential influence of shallow gas and gas hydrates on sea floor erosion of Rock Garden, an uplifted ridge offshore of New Zealand

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Abstract

Regional erosion of the Rock Garden ridge top, a bathymetric high within New Zealand’s Hikurangi Subduction Margin, is likely associated with its gas hydrate system. Seismic data reveal gas pockets that appear partially trapped beneath the shallow base of gas hydrate stability. Steady-state fluid flow simulations, conducted on detailed two-dimensional geological models, reveal that anomalous fluid pressure can develop close to the sea floor in response to lower-permeability hydrate-bearing sediments and underlying gas pockets. Transient simulations indicate that large-scale cycling of fluid overpressure may occur on time scales of a few to tens of years. We predict intense regions of hydro-fracturing to preferentially develop beneath the ridge top rather than beneath the flanks, due to more pronounced overpressure generation and gas migration through hydrate-bearing sediments. Results suggest that sediment weakening and erosion of the ridge top by hydro-fracturing could be owed to fluid dynamics of the shallow gas hydrate system.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Susan Ellis and Ake Fagereng for valuable discussions regarding the local tectonic setting of Rock Garden and rock failure criteria respectively. Thanks are also extended to Matteo Lupi for his initial advice on the visualisation of fluid flow results and to Karen Schmidt for her initial assistance with Matlab. S. Geiger thanks the Edinburgh Collaborative of Subsurface Science and Engineering, a joint research institute of the Edinburgh Research Partnership in Engineering and Mathematics, for financial support. An earlier version of this work, in the form of a PhD thesis, was reviewed by George Spence, John Townend and Gary Wilson. Their comments helped us significantly improve the manuscript. The work was then further improved by the constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers. The excellent efforts made by the captain and crew of R/V Tangaroa during the TAN0607 Hikurangi Margin gas hydrate research campaign are gratefully acknowledged. This research was funded through a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant, contract number GNS0403. Seismic processing was carried out with an academic license to the Globe Claritas seismic processing software. The program HWHYD, developed by the Centre for Gas Hydrate Research in the Institute of Petroleum Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, was used for gas hydrate phase boundary calculations.

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  1. Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR, Wischhofstr. 1–3, 24148, Kiel, Germany

    Gareth J. Crutchley

  2. Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK

    Sebastian Geiger

  3. GNS Science, P.O. Box 30368, Lower Hutt, 5040, New Zealand

    Ingo A. Pecher, Hai Zhu & Stuart A. Henrys

  4. Department of Geology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, 9054, New Zealand

    Andrew R. Gorman

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  1. Gareth J. Crutchley
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Correspondence to Gareth J. Crutchley.

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Crutchley, G.J., Geiger, S., Pecher, I.A. et al. The potential influence of shallow gas and gas hydrates on sea floor erosion of Rock Garden, an uplifted ridge offshore of New Zealand. Geo-Mar Lett 30, 283–303 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-010-0186-y

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