Petroleum Geology-II

Date: 17/12/2023
 Q.3). In the petroleum geosystem, the essential
components of the Subsurface Environment- diagram
and concept?
 1. Subsurface Water
• Two types of water can be recognized in the subsurface by
their mode of occurrence:

1. Free water: Free to move in and out of pores in response to a

pressure differential.
2. Interstitial, or irreducible water: It is bonded to mineral grains,
both by attachment to atomic lattices as hydroxyl radicals, and as a
discrete film of water. Interstitial water is often referred to as
irreducible water because it cannot be removed during the
production of oil or gas from a reservoir.
• Meteoric waters occur near the earth’s surface and are
caused by the infiltration of rainwater.
• Their salinity, naturally, is negligible, and they tend to be
oxidizing.
• Meteoric waters are often acidic because of dissolved humic,
carbonic, and nitrous acid (from the atmosphere), although
they may quickly become neutralized in the subsurface,
especially when they flow through carbonate rocks.
• Connate waters are harder to define. They were originally thought
of as residual seawater that was trapped during sedimentation.
• Current definitions proposed for connate waters include
“interstitial water existing in the reservoir rock prior to
disturbance by drilling” (Case, 1956) and “waters which have been
buried in a closed hydraulic system and have not formed part of
the hydraulic cycle for a long time”
(White, 1957).
• Connate waters differ markedly from seawater both in
concentration and chemistry.
• Juvenile waters are of primary magmatic origin. It may be
difficult to prove that such hydrothermal waters are indeed
primary and have received no contamination whatsoever
from connate waters.
• Mixed: These three definitions lead naturally to the fourth
class of subsurface waters those of mixed origin.
• The mixed waters may be caused by the confluence of
juvenile, connate, or meteoric waters.
• In most basins a transition zone exists between the surface
aquifer and the deeper connate zone.
 2. Subsurface Temperatures
• Bottom hole temperatures (BHTs) can be recorded from wells
and are generally taken several times at each casing point.
• As each log is run, the BHT can be measured.
• It is important to take several readings at each depth, because
the mud at the bottom of the hole takes hours to warm up to
the ambient temperature of the adjacent beds.
• Thus BHTs are recorded together with the number of hours
since circulation. Figure shows a BHT build-up curve.
3. Subsurface Pressures
• The two types of fluid pressure are hydrostatic and
hydrodynamic.
• The hydrostatic pressure is imposed by a column of fluid at
rest.
• For a column of fresh water (density 1.0) the hydrostatic
gradient is 0.433 psi/ft, or 0.173 kg/cm2 m.
• For water with 55,000 ppm of dissolved salts the gradient is
0.45 psi/ft; for 88,000 ppm of dissolved salts the gradient is
about 0.465psi/ft. These values are, of course, temperature
dependent.
Q.4). Surface and Subsurface Occurrence of
Oil?
 Surface Occurrence of Oil
• Mud Volcano and Mud Flows: It is a landform created by the
eruption of mud or slurries, water and gases and are caused by
diapiric intrusion of plastic clays with a surface expression of cone.
• High pressure gas water seepages that seepages that carry mud,
sand fragments of rock and occasionally oil.
• These are common in region underlain by incompetent shales,
boulder, submarine landslide deposits etc.
• Mud volcanoes are not true igneous volcanoes as they do not
produce lava and are not necessarily driven by magmatic activity.
• Mud volcanoes may range in size from merely 1 or 2 meters high
and 1 or 2 meters wide, to 700 meters high and 10 kilometres wide.
• Smaller mud exudations are sometimes referred to as mud-
pots.
• Mud volcanoes likely to form anticline, overlain by stiff, thick
clay.
• This clay desiccates and produces cracks deep enough to
allow gases escape.
• Once this passage is created gas, mixed with clay and or
groundwater will produce mud volcano continuously or
intermittently depending upon the pressure build-up.
 Subsurface Occurrence of Oil
• Some natural gas and crude oil can be observed in
many wells.
• Whether it is large enough to call a commercial pool or well is drilled at
edge, or it is a dry well.
• Pool, Field and Provinces: Commercial deposits
a. Pool: Body of oil and gas or both occurring in a separate reservoir under
a single pressure system.
b. Field: When several pools are related to single geological feature-
structural or stratigraphic. Individual pools in field may be laterally
distributed or may occur at different depth, e.g.: Salt dome, anticlinally
folded multiple sands.
c. Province: Number of oil and gas pools and field occur in a similar
geological environment.
 Q.6). Physical and Chemical Properties
of Petroleum- list and brief description?
Q.7). Specific gravity concept using Baume´
Scale and API°?
Specific gravity concept using Baume´ Scale

• The relationship between specific gravity

and degrees Baumé is a function of the
temperature.
• Different versions of the scale may use
different reference temperatures.
 Q.9). Describe the elemental
Composition of Crude Oils by
Weight %? What are hydrocarbons
and heterocompounds? Give a brief
account.
• In terms of elemental chemistry, oil consists largely of carbon and
hydrogen with traces of vanadium, nickel, and other elements.
• Although the elemental composition of oils is relatively
straightforward, there may be an immense number of molecular
compounds.
• No two oils are identical either in the compounds contained
or in the various proportions present.
• However, certain compositional trends are related to the age,
depth, source, and geographical location of the oil.
• Conoco’s Ponca City crude oil from Oklahoma, for example,
contains at least 234 compounds.
• For convenience the compounds found in oil may be divided
into two major groups: (1) the hydrocarbons, which contain
three major subgroups and (2) the heteorocompounds, which
contain other elements.
Q.10). Elemental composition of Crude Oil
by weight %?
 Q.11). Classification scheme of
Crude Oils suggested by Tissot and
Welte? Description using the
ternary diagram. ?
• The porphyrins contain carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, as well
as a metal radical.
• The presence of porphyrins in crude oil is of particular genetic
interest, because they may be derived either from the
chlorophyll of plants or the hemoglobin of blood.
• Data compiled by Tissot and Welte (1978) show that the
average vanadium and nickel content of 64 crude oils is 63
and 18 ppm, respectively.
• The known maximum values are 1200 ppm vanadium and 150
ppm nickel in the Boscan crude of Venezuela.
• Metals tend to be associated with resin, sulfur, and
asphaltene fractions of crude oils.
• Metals are rare in old, deep marine oils and are relatively
abundant in shallow, young, or degraded crudes.
• The great advantage of this classification is that it can also be
used to demonstrate the maturation and degradation paths of
oil in the subsurface.
Q.13). Relationship of hydrostatic and
lithostatic (geostatic) pressures.
Q.20). TOC, Vitrinite reflectance, Kerogen; -
concepts
 Q.21). Van Krevelen diagram and
different kerogens and corelation
with different stages of diagenesis.
 Different Types of Kerogen
• Type I kerogen is essentially algal in origin (Plate 5.6). It has a higher
proportion of hydrogen relative to oxygen than the other types of
kerogen have (H:O ratio is about 1.2-1.7). The H:C ratio is about 1.65.
This kerogen is particularly abundant
in algae such as Bottryococcus, which occurs in modern Coorongite and
ancient oil shales.
• Type II, or liptinitic, kerogen is of intermediate composition. Like algal
kerogen, it is rich in aliphatic compounds, and it has an H:C ratio of >1.
The original organic matter of type II kerogen consisted of algal detritus,
and also
contained material derived from zooplankton and phytoplankton. The
Kimmeridge clay of the
North Sea and the Tannezuft shale (Silurian) of Algeria are of this type.
• Type III, or humic, kerogen has a much lower H:C ratio
(<0.84). Chemically, it is low in aliphatic compounds, but rich
in aromatic ones. Humic kerogen is produced from the lignin
of the higher woody plants, which grow on land. It is this
humic material that, if buried as peat, undergoes diagenesis
to coal. Type III kerogen tends to generate largely gas and
little, if any, oil.
 Diagenesis
• This phase occurs in the shallow subsurface at near normal
temperatures and pressures. It includes both biogenic decay,
aided by bacteria, and abiogenic reactions.
• Methane, carbon dioxide, and water are given off by the
organic matter, leaving a complex hydrocarbon termed
kerogen (to be discussed in much greater detail shortly).
• The net result of the diagenesis of organic matter is the
reduction of its oxygen content, living the hydrogen: carbon
ratio largely unaltered.
Q.22). Formation of Kerogen-From Organic
Matter (OM) to Hydrocarbon.
Q.35). Purpose of basin analysis?
• Sedimentary basin analysis is a geologic method by which the
formation and evolution history of a sedimentary basin is
revealed, by analyzing the sediment fill and subsidence.
• Subsidence of sedimentary basins generates the spatial
distribution of accommodation infilling sediments.
• Aspects of the sediment, namely its composition, primary
structures, and internal architecture, can be synthesized into a
history of the basin fill.
• Such a synthesis can reveal how the basin formed, how the
sediment fill was transported or precipitated, and reveal
sources of the sediment fill.
• From such syntheses models can be developed to explain
broad basin formation mechanisms.
• Examples of such basin classifications include intracratonic,
rift, passive margin, strike-slip, forearc, backarc-marginal sea,
fold and thrust belt, and foreland basins.
• The petroleum geologist, whose ultimate goal is to determine
the possible presence and extent of hydrocarbons and
hydrocarbon-bearing rocks in a basin, and the academic
geologist, who may be concerned with any or all facets of a
basin's evolution.
Q.38). Sedimentary Basins of India-
categorizations?
 Q.39). Geographical distribution,
basinal area on land as well as offshore
in sq.km, Age of the Basin & Sediment-
thickness, any Recent Discoveries, Type
of Basin, interrelationship of Different
Tectonic Zones within the Basin, Oil
and gas shows within the basin,
Reserves Data Prognosticated, In-Place
reserves, Balance Recoverable:
Category-I basins of India.
 Q.40). Core analysis techniques?
• Whole core analysis is more time-consuming and expensive. It is,
however, essential for rocks with heterogeneous pore systems,
such as fractured and vuggy reservoirs, and heterogeneous rock
fabrics, such as conglomerate and biolithite.
• Mobile permeameters are also available. The “probe”
permeameter, also called the “mini”permeameter was first
developed nearly half a century ago (Dykstra and Parsons, 1950).
• It was little used until the 1970s, since then it has undergone a
renaissance.
• The probe permeameter involves placing a nozzle on a flat rock
surface, ensuring that there is an effective seal around the
aperture, and then pumping a fluid, generally nitrogen gas, into
the rock and measuring the rate of flow.
• The mini-permeameter has several great advantages over the
conventional one. It is sufficiently light and portable that it can
be carried around and used on cores in a core store, or on rock
outcrops in the field (Hurst and Goggin,1995).
• It is fast to operate, and can thus take many readings over a
small area of rock, thus testing for small-scale reservoir
heterogeneities.
• A special sampling and measurement technique referred to as
Gas Research Institute (GRI) (Crushed Shale) analysis was
developed by Core Lab and the Gas Research Institute for
these fine-grained rocks (Core Laboratories, 2014).
• The method determines the bulk density of the fine-grained
rock after which samples are reduced to small particles,
0.5e0.85 mm in diameter.
• Coring- and sampling-induced fractures are eliminated and
pore pathways are shortened.
Q.41). Study of drill cuttings- observation
and interpretation?
Q. 42). Process flow diagram of analysis of
drill cuttings?