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finding enough new oil fields oil to replace the

produced
oil. Global reserves have however not changed
very much because of higher estimates of recovery
from existing fields and because unconventional oil
like tar sand is now included in the reserves.
There is a major challenge for geoscientists to
develop ever better exploration methods and to
optimise
production.
Even if the global production of conventional oil
may be reduced there will be significant production
for many decades. This will mostly come from the tail
production of giant fields and from small reservoirs,
but it is rather labour intensive. This is also the case
with unconventional oil (tar sand and oil shale) and
also tight gas reserves and shale gas.
Until enough alternative sources of energy are
developed it is necessary to extract fossils fuels from
these resources. This should be done with as little
environmental
damage as possible and this requires a new
generation of highly skilled geoscientists.
1.17 Summary
In the exploration for oil and gas we need to predict the
occurrence and distribution of source rocks which is a
function of the sedimentary environment and climate
at the time of deposition. The burial history has to be
reconstructed to predict the timing of maturation and
migration. This involves complex modelling based on
the kinetics and temperature history.
Before drilling, the position of a trap and a reservoir
rock has to be determined.
The porosity and permeability of the reservoir rock
is critical. If the porosity is 30% it may at the best
contain about 250 l of oil and 50 l of water for each
m3 of rock, and assuming 50% recovery, 125 l can be
produced. If the porosity is only 15% it may contain
about 100 l of oil and the recovery may then be lower
so that less than 50 l will be produced.
The quality of reservoir rocks depends on the
depositional
environments and the primary mineralogical
and textural composition, and on the diagentic
processes
that change the reservoir properties during
burial.
For sandstone reservoirs the distribution and geometry
of sand is critical because much of this is below the
resolution of seismic methods, and even after drilling
the information from each well has to be extrapolated
in 3 dimensions.
For this reason I have included a chapter on
sedimentary
structures and sedimentary facies and also
on carbonates. There are, however, many textbooks
which will give a more detailed presentation of clastic
sedimentology. To be able to predict the reservoir
properties we must understand the principles of
sandstone
diagenesis and this is discussed in Chapter 4.
This also involves chemical reactions driven by
thermodynamics
and kinetics. Reservoir quality can to a
certain extent be modelled as a part of basin modelling,
if the primary mineralogical and textural composition
is known.
Exploration and production of conventional oil has
become well established and technologies have been
refined over many years. This book will include an
introduction to geophysical methods and also 4D
seismic methods. Interpretation of geophysical data
requires that the physical properties of sedimentary
rocks are known or can be predicted

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