Norton Sound Gas Seepage
Twenty-five miles offshore from Nome's gold beaches, natural gas now bubbles up through the ocean floor.
Found by shipboard water sampling during 1976, the seepage is not the first sign of oil and gas near Nome. Oil films have been reported on the lagoons near Nome and Cape Nome. Sometimes when a southerly (onshore) wind blows, a parafin-like foam is seen on the beaches.
As early as 1906, there was prospecting for oil on Hastings Creek near Cape Nome. Of two shallow wells drilled, one showed a trace of oil and the other a head of flammable gas under enough pressure to blow the tool stem back up the hole.
Oil seeps have been found in the Sinuk River Valley 30 km northeast of Nome and at the mouth of the Inglutalik River between Nome and Unalakleet
The light hydrocarbon (hydrogen and carbon) compounds of which natural gas is composed easily dissolve in water. Consequently, a technique of prospecting for marine seeps or monitoring of marine petroleum pollution is to look for the dissolved hydrocarbons in water samples.
Modern methods allow the detection of dissolved hydrocarbon in amounts less than one part in one billion. Concentrations 10 to 20 times normal in sea water were observed in the shallow water off Nome during 1976.
On the basis of a report of the findings of the gas seepage published by Joel D. Cline of NOAA and Mark L. Holmes of USGS, it appears that the gas may be rising up through one or more faults in the ocean bottom rocks. Apparently the gas is formed in Cretaceous age marine sediments laid down about 100 million years ago.
