HYSED-ro

Petroleum seeps have historically been important drivers of global petroleum exploration. Still today they can serve as direct indicators of gas and/or oil subsurface accumulations, being a natural borehole for the surface to the hydrocarbon reservoir. In particular the assessment of the origin of seeping gas is a key task for understanding, without drilling, the subsurface hydrocarbon potential, genesis (e.g. source rock maturity) and quality (secondary alteration of gas); e.g., the presence of shallow microbial gas, deeper thermogenic accumulations, the presence of oil and non-hydrocarbon undesirable gases (CO₂, N₂, H₂S). Seeps are then indicators of tectonic discontinuities (faults) and fractured rocks; they can also represent geo-hazards and sources of greenhouse gas (methane) and photochemical pollutants (ethane and propane).

HYSED (Hydrocarbon Seeps Database) is an onshore database which has the objective of unifining the available global data, on hydrocarbon seeps (gas seeps, mud volcanoes, methane rich-springs) on the same interface (database). 

In the present HYSED has two sub-databases, one for Italy (HYSED-it) and one for Romania (HYSED-ro).

Romania is one of the riches countries in Europe in natural gas and petroleum. At least 18 petroleum systems and 8 petroleum basin provinces were assessed (Popescu, 1995). Due to intense tectonics (e.g. faults), these basins include numerous hydrocarbon seepage systems (as defined by Abrams, 2005) thus making Romania one of the countries with the largest numbers of surface seeps in the world. These surface manifestations include gas seeps, sometimes forming everlasting fires, mud volcanoes, oil seeps, methane-rich water springs and asphalt shows.

HYSED-RO is the first database of onshore hydrocarbon seeps in Romania (HYSED-RO). The present version (2014) reports coordinates, names, origin of the gas (microbial, thermogenic, mixed) and available data (flux measurements, molecular and isotopic analysis)  of about 460 hydrocarbon seeps including mud volcanoes, gas seeps, oil seeps, methane-rich springs and historical asphalt pits.

HYSED-RO is the result of the project "GEOGENIC EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES FROM GEOTHERMAL AND PETROLEUM SYSTEMS- APPLICATION TO ROMANIA" (PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0537) coordinated by Baciu Calin (UBB Cluj).