Today, exploration depends on the use of sophisticated technology to identify potential new sources of natural gas. The process for finding natural gas includes:
inspecting and mapping outcrop geology for surface features like the presence of sedimentary rock, potential reservoir rock, potential traps and hydrocarbon-bearing source rocksexamining all known geological information about the area, including surface observations, exploration results from adjacent areas and records from previous area wellstesting cuttings and core samples brought to the surface from the test well to measure age, chemistry, porosity, and permeability of the rockmeasuring the wells flow rate to determine if economic quantities of natural gas are present; economic wells are then completed for productionrunning a seismic survey by transmitting acoustic energy into the earth and recording the energy reflected back to identify subsurface features; if seismic surveys identify potential economic structures, companies will drill a test well