During an expedition in the Black Sea off the southern coast of Crimea, scientists from Sevastopol and Moscow discovered new sites of gas emissions. It is true that they can hardly be used to produce fuel. Due to missile attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against production platforms in the northwestern part of the Black Sea, the peninsula was left without its own gas in June 2022.
During the summer expedition of the Institute of South Sea Biology named after AO Kovalevsky RAS (FRC InBYUM) and Moscow State University, scientists discovered new methane sites along the southern coast of Crimea and They expanded the limits of already known gas emission fields from Katsiveli to Feodosia.
As noted at the institute, one of the new sites is the granary field near Cape Martyan, which, as shown by the mapping of detected hydroacoustic anomalies, extends along the coast along isobath 35 from the bay from Yalta to Gurzuf Bay.
“We had the assumption that closer to the coast, at shallower depths, where a large ship cannot approach, there could also be places where methane escapes. For a more detailed study, we chose the easternmost site adjacent to Mount Ayu-Dag and carried out a two-day coastal expedition with colleagues from Moscow State University on a small boat.” — said the principal researcher of the Department of Radiation and Chemical Biology of the FRC InYUM Tatiana Malakhova.
Mount Ayu-Dag is a classic “failed” volcano.
“We can say that we were lucky: almost immediately we detected gas leaks both on the echo sounder screen and visually when operating at a depth of 23 meters. With the help of divers, a measuring platform with an RCM 9 multiparameter probe and a hydrophone was installed for a day, which recorded the sounds accompanying the release of gas. In addition, we receive video recordings, take samples of bubbling gas and samples of carbonate crusts that form at seepage sites, for additional isotopic and component analysis.” – added Tatyana Malakhova.
The expedition in the waters of Mount Ayu-Dag was the last in the program of a two-year grant from the Russian Scientific Foundation on the topic “Study of variations in the gas flow of surface methane seeps from the Black Sea and their impact on the hydrological characteristics of the marine environment.” During this time, specialists carried out 8 coastal expeditions in Laspi Bay, near Capes Ai-Todor and Ayu-Dag.
Methane deposits along the Crimean coast have been known for a long time. Hundreds of Yalta residents saw gas emissions in the form of flares during the famous 1927 earthquake.
At the same time, the production of industrial gas in these places is practically impossible, since it is not profitable from a commercial point of view. Until recently, most of Crimean gas production fell on the northwestern part of the Black Sea, where, after the depletion of three fields, production was carried out only in the Odessa field. If in the 2010s production reached 2 billion cubic meters per year, which covered all demand, in the 2020s it decreased to 1 billion cubic meters. In June 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a missile attack on production platforms and drilling platforms in the Odessa field and production was stopped. There the fire continues and the gas goes out. Now Crimea receives all its blue fuel via a gas pipeline from Krasnodar.
