mir911, page-81

I think it could only happen if the coals were oversaturated, which we know they aren't because they are producing lots of water, which means the cleats are full of water and not gas.

If for some reason an explosive gas release did happen pretty close to time zero it would mean that the coal would be fractured right from the start, and so it would be desorbing gas at the same rate both during the lost gas phase and inside the canister, so it should mean the Q1 estimate was roughly accurate.

It's not like there's a big bubble of gas down there and if you let it out, you lose gas that you can't account for. The rate of gas release from the coals is governed by the laws of diffusion and you can't get more gas off the coals than the laws of diffusion allow. There will be no gas release at all until the pressure of the core on its way up passes the critical desorption pressure, which from memory is around 2300 psi, which means gas can't come off the coals until the core reaches around 1500m depth.

Coal core frequently fractures during drilling because coal is brittle, so the fact the core is broken up doesn't indicate explosive gas release.

All in all it just doesn't add up to me. But as I said it doesn't really matter what the cause is. If the production testing saturations of ~85% are correct, then something must have happened to make the desorption testing go wrong.