Seabed Faulting Associated with Gas Leakage in the Southern Malvinas Basin and Burdwood Bank

JUAN PABLO ORMAZABAL; FEDERICO DAMIÁN ESTEBAN; SEBASTIÁN PRINCIPI; MARÍA EMILIA BRAVO; FERMIN IGNACIO PALMA; JOSÉ ISOLA; DONALDO BRAN; ALEJANDRO ALBERTO TASSONE

Montevideo

Congreso; First EAGE Conference on South Atlantic Offshore Energy Resources; 2023

European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers

This work presents a study made in the southern part of the Malvinas Basin and the Burdwood Bank, focused on the structural characteristics of the area, and its role in the gas leakage system. The used database is composed of seismoacoustic methods like 3D seismic, sub-bottom profiles and bathymetry data. With this information, different features we observed in the seabed and the shallow subbottom. Three sets of faults were observed in the area, affecting the newer sedimentary succession. The genesis of this faults is related to the strike-slip tectonics present in the area at least since the Miocene, and active nowadays in the South American-Scotia plates boundary. Some of these faults are associated with a mud volcano and several pockmarks, as well as different acoustic anomalies in the seabed and the sub-bottom, especially around the gas hydrate stability zone. All this structures are located over anticline hinges, revealing the importance of this structures in the accumulation of fluids and their posterior migration through the faults to the gas hydrate stability zone and the seabed, forming pockmarks and the mud volcano.