Hi Devon,
How's it going.  Good to hear that you are still in the "gas business".  I
encountered a similar situation at a site in Colorado and was equally
perplexed.  We had several percent hydrogen and up to a couple hundred ppm
of CH4.  Our samples had been collected through the a hollow stem auger and
it was in an area that was very hard drilling (actually broke a couple
bits).  The only explanation that we could come up with was that it was
drill-stem metamorphosis.  The H2 had a delta D value of about -600 but we
were never able to get an isotopic analysis on the CH4.  I am still
perplexed by this problem and would really appreciate hearing any responses
you get that are not on ISOGEOCHEM.
Dennis

Dennis D. Coleman
Isotech Laboratories, Inc.
1308 Parkland Court
Champaign, IL 61821
phone: 217-398-3490
fax: 217-398-3493
email: [log in to unmask]
web page: www.isotechlabs.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stable Isotope Geochemistry [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of Devon Rowe
> Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 6:28 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: H2 in nature
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I am doing some work with gases in the Los Angeles Basin- specifically
> looking at 13C isotope ratios of shallow gases from soils in
> the vicinity of
> some of the Los Angeles oil fields.  I have found, quite
> unexpectedly, that
> there is a significant amount of hydrogen in most of our
> samples collected
> from less that 100 ft below surface.  Up to 4% vol., and in most cases
> methane is only present at ppm levels.  Has anyone
> encountered similar gas
> systems who could point me toward some appropriate references
> discussing
> origin/migration pathways, etc?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Devon Rowe
>