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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

CSPG Special Publications

Abstract


Facts and Principles of World Petroleum Occurrence — Memoir 6, 1980
Pages 1002-1002
Symposium Abstracts

Predicting Stratigraphic Traps: Abstract

Robert J. Weimer1

Exploration for stratigraphic traps during the past 30 years has emphasized prediction of areas where porous and permeable reservoir rocks change into impermeable strata in a favorable structural position for petroleum entrapment. Efforts have been directed to areas where production is known from structural or other traps. Use of the depositional environment as a paleogeomorphic indicator has permitted determination of the geometry of reservoir rock, and has aided in predicting porosity trends. Regional stratigraphic analyses of ancient basins have been especially helpful in locating and predicting high-energy shoreline deposits and associated porosity trends, but less useful in predicting porosity trends associated with other depositional environments.

The question of why one area of good reservoir rock is productive of petroleum, while other similar areas are not, has long been an enigma in stratigraphic-trap exploration. New scientific advances hold promise of an answer to this question for many prospective basins. Organic geochemists now can more accurately evaluate source rocks, finger-print crude oil to trace migration paths, and determine time of migration by paleotemperature studies. Sedimentary petrologists can more effectively analyze the diagenetic history of a reservoir rock, and trace the evolution of both primary and secondary porosity and permeability, especially in relation to the time of migration and development of the trap. Mechanical log suites now give the geologist and geophysicist more accurate tot Is and methods for analyzing porosity, fluid content and other physical properties of reservoir and non-reservoir rocks. Further, borehole data, and advances in seismic data acquisition and processing, have opened the field of stratigraphic-trap exploration to seismologists. Finally, combining recent advances in the fields of paleontology, sedimentation, petrology and plate tectonics, the stratigrapher can now predict more accurately the influence of intra-basin tectonics on the deposition and distribution of reservoir strata, and describe changes in the structural configuration of a stratigraphic trap through geologic time.

Future success in predicting the subtle stratigraphic trap clearly lies in the explorer’s ability to integrate all essential data from many scientific disciplines into a coherent geologic history of the origin, migration and entrapment of petroleum.

Acknowledgments and Associated Footnotes

1 Colorado School of Mines, Geology Department, Golden, Colorado 80401

Copyright © 2009 by the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists