There is an increasing need to identify suitable techniques for monitoring hydrate accumulations during production. The feasibility of remotely monitoring GH accu­mulations during production is only beginning to be examined. The type of geo­physical measurement that has been used most successfully for exploration is surface seismic. 2D and 3D surface seismic surveys have been used extensively for mapping the distribution of GH accumulations, delineating their large-scale fea­tures and providing rough estimates of the average SH. Advanced processing tech­niques can provide depth-varying SH estimates over large areas (e. g., [30,96,149]), though their applicability depends on the depth and thickness of the hydrate.

In exploration surveys, little prior information is available, and the primary goal is to determine whether hydrate is present and, if so, how much. In contrast, inves­tigations using geophysical techniques for monitoring production focus on much smaller regions in the vicinity of production wells and require higher resolution and measurement repeatability in order to image small variations in properties.