Fuente: Futurity
Expuesto el: martes, 10 de septiembre de 2013 19:12
Autor: Kat Kerlin-UC Davis
Asunto: Tool tracks oil reserves from start to finish
University of California, Davis rightOriginal Study Posted by Kat Kerlin-UC Davis on September 10, 2013 A new tool pinpoints where petroleum and gas reserves have accumulated. The tool is an index that provides a better understanding of how oil travels from where it was formed to where it has collected and may reduce the environmental impact of discovering new resources. "The index should result in fewer incidents of failed drilling, which should reduce unnecessary environmental disturbance," says Qing-zhu Yin, a geology professor at the University of California, Davis. Yin is co-author of a recent study describing the tool published in the journal Scientific Reports. With further research, Yin says the index could also be used to trace pollutants caused by oil spills and guide environmental mitigation in such instances. "Generations and generations of people have been trying different tools," says Yin. "The problem is these tools have not been good indicators of the distance the oil travels, and there's a lot of variability depending on the oil source. "In this study, we've teased out the facts irrelevant to distance migration and created a model. Then we applied it to the real world and found it works really beautifully." There are two types of petroleum migration: primary migration refers to the movement of oil out of the rocks where it was formed. Secondary migration is the movement of this oil to the rock formation reservoir where it collects. "Secondary petroleum migration in many basins around the world is poorly understood and yet the information about this process is most important for petroleum exploration," the study's authors write. The scientists tested the index at the Xifeng Oilfield in Inner Mongolia, as well as the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, which contains one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas. They found it to be a reliable odometer for the distance the oil traveled. Liuping Zhang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing led the study, which was funded by China Sci-Tech Project of National Importance, China National Major Science 973 Projects, State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, and Sinopec Sci-Tech Project. Source: UC Davis
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