Hi, Devon and others:

The hydrogen found in oil wells may be the result of partial reaction between
water and some kind of active metals. I saw the similar situation in Sea Cliff
oil wells in California. There are carbon monoxide present in addition of
hydrogen. The partial reaction can produce very light hydrogen. It is around
-400 per mil in the Sea Cliff case.  The lab test I did for partial reaction
produced hydrogen with the isotope ratio in the same negative level.

Regards.

Dachun Zhang
Stable Isotope Lab
ZymaX

"Coleman, Dennis D." wrote:

> 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
> >