Events

Seminar Title:

“Methane Hydrates as a Petroleum System: Implications for Exploration and Production”

Abstract:

Methane hydrates have attracted a great deal of interest internationally in recent years as a potential energy resource. Several countries, including India, China, South Korea, and Japan, have large-scale efforts to identify and characterize potential exploration targets, and several production tests have been performed or are planned. Methane hydrates may be approached in the standard petroleum systems framework in that they require a methane source, appropriate migration pathways, a suitable reservoir, and a seal to prevent further migration.

Our research in UT PGE focuses on migration and accumulation in economic-scale hydrate deposits in the Gulf of Mexico. We are working on characterizing pore-scale properties that control the development and persistence of these deposits over time, as well as methods to detect various properties of the host sediments from log or seismic data. I will present some results of our work and share some thoughts on ways to explore and exploit these resources.

Biography:

Hugh Daigle joined the faculty at UT PGE in January 2013. He holds an AB in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University and a PhD in Earth Science from Rice University. Dr. Daigle also has 5 years of industry experience, including wireling logging for Schlumberger, an internship at ExxonMobil, and petrophysics at Chevron. He currently serves on the editorial board of several journals and is a member of the United States Advisory Committee on Scientific Ocean Drilling and the USGS Advisory Group for Pressure Core Analyses.

When he is not being Dr. Daigle he spends time with his sons, aged 6 months and 3 years, and enjoys cooking, crossword puzzles, and playing the piano.