GARAH WP3 Gas Hydrate overview report: Deliverable 3.3

This report presents the current state of hydrate-related data in the European continental margins and analyses it in order to define critical knowledge gaps and areas of interest for future joint projects and for assessing the potential of CO2-rich hydrates for safe geological storage and hydrate-related geohazards and risks. Hydrate-related data show a heterogeneous distribution and knowledge gaps (areas with <1 records per 100 km2) have been defined. Some of these knowledge gaps have been classified as critical: east of Greenland, Svalbard, the northern Norwegian margin, the southern-western Barents Sea and the White Sea, the north of the British Islands, the Gulf of Cádiz, the Bay of Biscay, the north-western Iberian margin and the south Mediterranean Sea. For a fully interoperability of the hydrate related information, future hydrate related data should be collected and stored compliant the data model structure of the hydrate GIS-data base of GARAH project. Nine areas of interest for future scientific projects were defined based on the critical knowledge gaps, potential CO2 storage and geohazard risk: east Greenland and Svalbard, the west Barents and White seas, the northwest Norwegian margin, the northwest British Islands, the Bay of Biscay and the northwest Iberian margin, the southern Iberian and northern Moroccan margins, the Tunisian and Libyan margins, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Black and Marmara seas. The Bay of Biscay shows a potential safe CO2 deep offshore storage capacity: 3,422 km3 and 3,700 km3, in the French and Spanish EEZ, respectively. Finally, the susceptibility assessment of occurrence of hydrate dissociation processes on the seafloor shows high values in Svalbard, the northern Norwegian margin—Barents Sea, the continental slope of the mid-Norwegian margin and the North Sea, the Gulf of Cádiz and the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Moderate values are observed on the continental shelf of western Greenland, the northwest of the British Islands and the continental slope of the western and northern Mediterranean Sea.