Detection of Natural gas leakage in Al-Ahmadi area, South of Kuwait: A preliminary study

The Block No.1 of Al-Ahmadi Town suffers from repeated cycles of natural gas leakage in the last decade. Each cycle has its own characteristics regarding the leaking period and gas intensity. Some inhabitants of this Block moved out of their houses due to their fear about the spread of diseases such asthma and possible disaster such as fires due to gas emission. The earlier investigations has not yet reached the reasons behind the gas leakage, but limited the reason to one of the following: geological factors; the 50 year old gas network; and the new gas network. Intensive geochemical survey represented by 47626 gas readings has been conducted inside and around the Block No. 1 of Al-Ahmadi Town. This is to shed light on the possible reasons behind the repeated natural gas leakage phenomena. This is to locate and identify the leakage source, which will be helpful for planning to solve the gas leakage problem and to prevent any possible further gas leakage from the subsurface and also to prevent any possible untoward incident due to gas leakage. The survey has been run using an up-to -date Soil Gas Detector (Crowcon Gas-Detector) that based technically of the Flame Ionization Detection (FID) technique and utilizing a stream-mode surveying technique. Inspection of the iso-methane contour map of the surveyed area revealed that the study area is characterized by low to medium gas leakage intensity (0-500 CPS). Extremely high local anomalies are recorded to the west of the study area, which attains gas intensity up to 4000 (CPS). However, probable source of gas leakage may exist NE ward of the study area as an increase in the gas intensity up to 1000 CPS is remarkable at this direction. The probable reasons of the gas leakage is may either due to near surface artificial or natural gas leakage sources. The differentiation between these possible sources requires detailed background on the sub surface infrastructures, such as pipeline network, as well as the near-surface joints or fractures (neotectonics) of the study area. Further shallow geophysical surveys are recommended for mapping the near surface weakness zones, microstructures and neotectonics. (Al-Rashed, A. Detection of Natural gas leakage in Al-Ahmadi area, South of Kuwait: A preliminary study.