End_Page 1006------------------------------

Increasing demand and decreasing supply of hydrocarbon products require increased activities in petroleum exploration and production and especially improvement in exploration success. Improvement in exploration success both in previously explored and unexplored areas can only be possible with the integration of all the information and data obtained from geologic, geophysical, geochemical, hydrodynamic, and thermodynamic studies.

A three-dimensional deterministic, dynamic model is constructed to calculate all the above measurable values with the help of mass and energy transport equations, and by equations describing the physical and/or physico-chemical changes in organic matter as a function of temperature in sedimentary sequences. Input data consist of heat flux, initial physical and thermal properties of sediments, paleobathymetric estimates, sedimentation rate and amount, and type of organic matter. Then, the model computes pressure, temperature, physical and thermal properties of sediments, maturity of organic matter, and generation and accumulation potential of hydrocarbons as a function of space and time.

This model has been successfully applied to four basins with different lithologies (clastics, carbonates, and cyclic sediments) and various structural patterns (halokinesis, faulting, and folding). The allowable error limits are ±3°C for temperature, and ±10% for maturity of organic matter.

End_of_Article - Last_Page 1007------------