Since 1996, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has been intensively conducting exploratory surveys of methane hydrates (MHs) in the eastern Nankai Trough; this area has been chosen as a model for MH surveys (Fig. 1). On the basis of the results from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) obtained for “Nankai Trough” wells in 1999 (Tsuji et al.,2004) and METI “Tokai-oki to Kumano-nada” exploratory test wells in 2004 (Takahashi and Tsuji, 2005; Tsuji et al., 2009; Fujiiet al., 2009), MH-bearing sand-rich intervals (i.e., sand porefilling-type MHs) have been identified in turbidite fan deposits of the eastern Nankai Trough.On the basis of the analyses of the aforementioned well data together with 2D/3D seismic survey data acquired in 1996, 2001,and 2002, we identified more than ten prospective MHconcentrated zones (MHCZs) in this area (Saeki et al., 2008).Resource assessments of the methane gas within MHs were performed using a probabilistic approach (Fujii et al., 2008). The total amount of methane gas contained in the MHs within the survey
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