Problems Of Petroleum Migration

The main intention of this book is to provide geoscientists interested or working in hydrocarbon exploration with a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of hydrocarbon migration systems in sedimentary basins and to give guidelines for its application in basin evaluation. For this purpose, the book fully integrates hydrogeologic and hydrodynamic aspects of the evolution of sedimentary basins with petroleum geologic aspects. It will be of interest to petroleum geologists, hydrogeologists, geochemists and reservoir geologists.

This is a comprehensive synthesis of state-of-the-art information on vitally important hydrocarbon habitats for advanced geology students and researchers, exploration geoscientists, and petroleum managers.

This book presents the authors' research findings on the dynamics of oil migration, research methodologies, insights and applications in petroliferous basins. It studies the behaviors of oil migration in porous media through physical experiments and numerical simulations, explores the mechanism of oil migration and effects of migration process, and then establishes a migration modeling method by coupling the source, driving forces and carriers. The new method can be used to estimate the amount of migrated hydrocarbons and then predict the location of possible hydrocarbon accumulations in different parts of a basin. This approach is useful for resources assessment and prediction of the distribution of hydrocarbon accumulations. An example utilizing this methodology is presented to study the dynamics of migration and accumulation processes in the southern slope of Dongying Depression in Bohai Bay Basin in China. The book appeals to scientists and professionals working on petroleum prospecting as well as faculty and students in petroleum geology.

This book has been prepared by the collaborative effort of two somewhat separate technical groups: the researchers at the Institute for Petroleum and Organic Geochemistry, Forschungszentrum Jii lich (KFA), and the technical staff of Integrated Exploration Systems (IES). One of us, Donald R. Baker, from Rice University, Houston, has spent so much time at KFA as a guest scientist and researcher that it is most appropriate for him to contribute to the book. During its more than 20-year history the KFA group has made numerous and significant contributions to the understanding of petroleum evolution. The KFA researchers have emphasized both the field and laboratory approaches to such important problems as source rock recognition and evaluation, oil and gas generation, maturation of organic matter, expulsion and migration of hydrocarbons, and crude oil composition and alteration. IES Jiilich has been a leader in the development and application of numerical simulation (basin modeling) procedures. The cooperation between the two groups has resulted in a very fruitful synergy effect both in the development of modeling software and in its application. The purpose of the present volume developed out of the 1994 publication by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists of a collection of individually authored papers entitled The Petroleum System - From Source to Trap, edited by L. B. Magoon and W. G. Dow.