Locating ethane gas from boundary neutrally buoyant gas dispersion processes

A recent low-cost oil and gas prospecting technology from Shell Global Solutions has been useful in finding oil and gas reserves by measuring ethane gas escaping from the ground. Ethane gas is a good indicator of oil and gas reserves as it arises from accumulated heavy hydrocarbon molecules decomposing into lighter products e.g., gasoline. In addition, atmospheric background concentration is a thousand times lower implying that seepages of ethane gas show up very clearly and can be used in prospecting/assessing large areas for oil and gas.

A specially-adapted off road vehicle fitted with an ultra-sensitive ethane gas sensor records gas concentrations, wind speed and wind direction. These data constitutes over time a time-continuous dispersion process which is related to the hydrocarbon accumulations at depth via a gas dispersion model based upon the Euler-Lagrange equation. Thus the scientific exercise is to locate new gas and oil reserves from methane gases leaking to the surface, i.e. a very ill-posed inverse problem needs to be solved.

In the project we consider and compare various Bayesian methodologies for efficiently locating ethane gas reservoirs.