Petroleum Accumulation

By: Kamran Abdul Rehman FA08-ERS-005 FA08-ERS-009

Bilal Aslam Bilal Saleem

FA08-ERS-017 FA08-ERS-023

y The hydrocarbons stored in rocks due to any reason is

called as petroleum accumulation.

Its Properties
y If petroleum is to be produced from the subsurface it must

accumulate in rocks that are porous and permeable enough for reasonable volumes of petroleum to be produced at reasonable cost. y Most reservoir rocks have permeabilities greater than 1 millidarcy; some have permeabilities of many darcies (1 darcy is 10 12 m2). y Most reservoir rocks are sediments such as sandstones, conglomerates, and limestones with porosities typically ranging from 10 to 30 per cent, the petroleum being contained in the pores of the sediments. y Petroleum can also accumulate in fractures in limestones, or even within the source rocks themselves.

Cont .
y The petroleum typically fills 50 90 per cent of the pore

space, the remainder of the pore space containing formation water trapped when the petroleum entered the field. y In some accumulations the reservoir can be filled by gas or both gas and oil may occupy the pore volume. y Oil reservoirs can occur at any depth within the crust but liquid oil accumulations are rarely found deeper than 5 km, for the temperatures at greater depths may be so high (more than 160 C) that any oil in the reservoir would be cracked to gas.

y Petroleum accumulations are ephemeral features; the

petroleum often leaks through the seals with the passage of time. y It is thought that most of the petroleum generated during the history of the Earth has leaked away and has been destroyed at the surface by bacterial action and evaporation. y Most of the world's existing large petroleum accumulations were generated and migrated within the past few tens of millions of years, and few petroleum accumulations have been found that have contained petroleum for more than 100 million years.

y In order for petroleum to accumulate in a trap, several

criteria must be satisfied. The crude oil and natural gas is trapped in a porous and permeable rock body: a reservoir rock encased above, and sometimes below, by fine-grained rocks that are relatively impermeable to crude oil the seals. y Crude oil (and gas) is kept in the trap by the buoyancy forces acting on it, which tend to move the oil to the surface of the sedimentary basin but are prevented from doing so by the seals. The trap must completely seal an area of reservoir rock; if it does not, no petroleum accumulation will develop.

y Most seals are fine-grained rocks such as shales or

mudstones. The best seals are salt beds, which can even trap gas for long periods of geological time. y Lateral sealing is accomplished either by structural deformation of the reservoir rock and seal into a closed anticline or by the reservoir rock changing laterally into a seal rock such as a shale. Faulting of the trap might also place a shale next to a reservoir rock and thus seal the trap.

y The porosity (volume of pore spaces) and

permeability (capacity for transmitting fluids) of carrier and reservoir beds are important factors in the migration and accumulation of oil. Most petroleum accumulations have been found in clastic reservoirs (sandstones and siltstones). Next in number are the carbonate reservoirs (limestones and dolomites). Accumulations of petroleum also occur in shales and igneous and metamorphic rocks because of porosity resulting from fracturing, but such reservoirs are relatively rare.

Times of Accumulation
y The earliest time to judge when the oil and gas have

accumulated. y It depends upon the conditions on which migration took place. For this we study mainly two factors. y 1). The Law of Gas. y 2). Time Trap Formed.

1). The Law of Gas.

If the temperature increase then volume of gas also increased and it is decreased when pressure increased. But in the case of petroleum accumulation we can neglect the temperature effect . As shown in the following figure. We need minimum 143 atm pressure to inter the gas in trap. The capacity of a trap to hold the gas is actually the function of pressure.
y Figure 1:

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y The all gas which is accumulated is due to the pressure which is already developed because of depth and strata over the trap. If this pressure is not developed then the accumulation was also impossible. The following figure(2) also shows that the over lying strata can develop the pressure if this strata removed then gas will escaped.

Figure 2

This diagram is showing the selective trapping of oil and gas.

y Stage 1: The oil and gas are above

Figure 3:

the spill point, and both will continue to be trapped until the free water is all displaced and oil water contact (OWC) reaches the spill point. y Stage 2: Gas continues to be trapped, until gas oil contact (GOC) reaches the spill point. while oil spills out and goes up on the dip. y Stage 3: Gas has filled the trap and spills out up the dip. Oil by passes the trap and goes up the dip.

This diagram is showing the series of traps.

y At A trap 1 is in the state of

stage 2 (Fig. 3): oil is being spilled out into trap 2. Traps 3 and 4 are full of Sault water. y In B , trap1 has spilled all its oil into trap 2. Trap 2 is full of oil, and the excess is passing up the dip into trap 3. Trap 1 is full of gas. y In C , trap 1 is unchanged, trap 2 has a gas cap (the excess gas came from trap 1), trap 3 is full of oil and trap 4 is still full of water but will be the next to be filled with oil spilling out of trap.

y Figure 4:

2). Time Trap Formed.

y The accumulation can not be occurred before the trap isformed, if it is like that then we can find out the time of accumulation y Trap can be formed in one geological episode or more then one episode. y This may be possible that as the reservoir rocks made, instantly the deposition occur and the trap formed or it may also possible that more time required to form the trap. y Or it may also possible that whole of the reservoir rock s life, just modification processes occur and no trap formed, so it means that there will no trap formed and till the trap not formed, no first accumulation of the oil will occur.

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Trap 1 is the oldest and formed at a time when the shale deposit at the edge of sandstone bed. Trap 2 formed after faulting. Trap 3 formed after the erosion and shale deposited. Trap 4 is the lens trap and made in the sandstone. Trap 5, 6 and 7 made after folding subsequently.
This diagrammatic section illustrating the method of determining the relative time when a trap was formed. Stratigraphic time planes are labeled from a to e . Figure 5:

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