ABSTRACT

Petroleum explorationists are often faced with determining the relationship between the products of wells completed in rock types that may have some spatial or communicative relationship. Conventional methods of sampling and analysis are often time-consuming and expensive. A new method for sampling, analysis, and computerized data interpretation of the C2-C16 fraction of crude oil and natual gas is reported here.

Controlled temperature headspace sampling of crude oils and direct pressure-equilibrated natural gas exposure of carbon adsorption wires have been successfully applied to the sampling of volatile fractions of petroleum fluids. Thermal vacuum desorption followed by mass spectrometric analysis of these volatile organic compounds is a rapid and accurate method for obtaining detailed information about the distribution (fingerprint) of the components in a given sample. Techniques of computerized chemical pattern recognition, such as principal components analysis (PCA) with graphic rotation, discriminant analyis and similarity analyis (SIMCA) have proven useful in establishing inter-relationships between samples via the fingerprints of their volatile fractions.

Studies have been conducted on multiple samples from numerous continental basins. The results of several of these studies are presented to demonstrate the applicability of this new, rapid,cost-efficient approach to correlation studies.

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