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    Roger Amato

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    OEMM Web Team

The Center for Marine Resources and Environmental Technology (CMRET) at the University of Mississippi established the Gas Hydrates Research Consortium in 2001 to study gas hydrate mounds and active gaseous hydrocarbon vents in the Gulf of Mexico. The Consortium is composed of gas hydrate experts from most of the major Gulf Coast universities along with oceanographic institutes including Woods Hole and Scripps. One of the main purposes of the program is to better understand the relationships between gas hydrates and episodes of sediment instability that may pose a threat to the petroleum industry’s infrastructure and safety of operations.

The Consortium program involves the development of a permanent observatory to monitor the dissociation /accumulation of gas hydrates and impacts on the adjacent seafloor, water column and marine biota. Design aspects have been discussed in detail by some of the world’s foremost experts in appropriate fields at several workshops held during the past several years. The site selected for the observatory is in Mississippi Canyon Block 118 in 2,500 to 3,000 feet of water.

The observatory is expected to become fully operational by the end of 2006. It will provide, on a more or less continuous basis, physical and chemical information concerning changes in gas hydrate deposits, active gas vents, seafloor stability, and the environmental character of the area. If that data reveals factors which elicit responses from chemosynthetic communities nearby, the station’s capabilities will be expanded to include biological monitoring. That would permit study of the interactions between life forms and physical/chemical stimuli and of the ways biologic agents produce or modify geologic materials and processes. Before deployment of the observatory, detailed site surveys were conducted and all components were tested and evaluated. Funding for the program has been provided by the Minerals Management Service, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Lab, and the Naval Research Lab.

	Gas Hydrates Research Consortium Sea Floor Observatory
	The Center for Marine Resources and Environmental Technology Proposal for FY2006 Funding (PDF)