Petroleum Exploration and Development (Dec 2024)
Connotation and research strategy of the whole petroleum system
Abstract
Traditional petroleum system theories emphasize the restoration of the accumulation process from “source” to “trap”. The main oil and gas resources in the concept are conventional oil and gas, lacking the concept and research of unconventional oil and gas enrichment mechanism. The whole petroleum system is developed from the traditional petroleum system. Combined with unconventional oil and gas exploration practices and discoveries such as shale oil and gas, the whole petroleum system adds the research content of unconventional oil and gas. Although the study of the whole petroleum system is still in three aspects: geological elements, dynamic evolution and oil and gas distribution, its research ideas and research contents are very different, including the following three aspects. (1) In terms of geological elements, the traditional petroleum system studies the characteristics of source rocks and hydrocarbon generation evolution, and the reservoir properties, traps, migration and preservation conditions of conventional oil and gas. On the basis of the above research, the whole petroleum system has increased the quantitative evaluation of retained hydrocarbons, unconventional reservoir characterization, source reservoir configuration and other research contents. (2) In terms of dynamic evolution, the petroleum system studies the matching between the evolution of conventional oil and gas source rocks and the formation period of traps, while the whole petroleum system has increased the research content of the matching of unconventional reservoir densification and oil and gas charging, and the later transformation of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. (3) In terms of oil and gas distribution, the petroleum system takes buoyancy-drived accumulation mechanism as the core to study the migration, accumulation and distribution of conventional oil and gas. The whole petroleum system adds unconventional oil and gas self-sealing accumulation mechanism and conventional-unconventional oil and gas distribution sequence, so as to determine the oil and gas distribution characteristics of the whole petroleum system.
