The main method of searching for oil and gas fields on the shelf is seismic survey. Application of inexpensive geochemical methods of hydrocarbon prospecting is aimed at studying bottom sediments and near-bottom waters and leads to detection of a large number of false anomalies related to the activity of methane-producing bacteria. Geoelectrochemical methods based on the study of the distribution in the rocks of mobile and secondary fixed forms of heavy metals, the so-called jet halos of dispersion, are widely used in the search and study of deep-seated ore and oil-and-gas deposits of land. There is an example of successful application of geoelectrochemical methods on the Baltic Sea shelf - employees of VIRG-Rudgeofizika obtained contrasting geoelectrochemical anomalies in the study of bottom samples over the Ladushkinskoe oil field. Therefore, the inclusion of geoelectrochemical methods, which study jet halos of dispersion directly in the water column, into the complex of geophysical methods may become an interesting direction for the search of oil and gas fields on the shelf. The work is devoted to consideration of possibilities of application of geoelectrochemical methods of searches of oil and gas fields of the shelf at sampling (or without sampling - in the liquid phase it is possible to determine concentration of mobile forms of metals in situ) from the middle or upper water column of the shelf. A simplified model of formation of a jet halo over an oil and gas deposit in the water column, developed by Professor O.F. Putikov, is used as the basis. The results of numerical modeling of jet halo on the shelf are considered.
