Kerogen is an important factor in the generation of oil and gas and which types of unconventional resources it can form. It makes up four different types that are each prone to mature into a certain form of petroleum product. Type I is dominantly oil prone, Type II can generate both oil and gas, and Type II is mainly a gas generating kerogen. Type IV is considered “dead oil” and does not generate any producible hydrocarbon. The three main producible types can be seen in many different unconventional resources in which this report discusses some of the most important examples for each type along with how producible each formation/resource is.
Kerogen is an insoluble macromolecular organic matter that forms from various environments, climates, and biota, giving information on the geologic pasts of these kerogen sources. It is formed by diagenetic processes in the first few hundred meters of burial (Dow, 1976). Kerogen, when mature, forms petroleum and natural gas. To become mature, the kerogen converts by increases in temperature and pressure. Kerogen makes up a large component of the total carbon on Earth with 1016 tons of C compared to 1012 tons of living biomass (Durand, 1980). The original definition of kerogen only included organic-rich rocks of economic importance, but then this definition was extended to include all organic matter rocks capable of generating oil. This was because it was determined that organic matter in sedimentary rocks, even in small amounts, could generate oil (mature) through pyrolysis or burial for long periods of times.
The modern definition as of the late 1950s states that kerogen is the dispersed organic matter of sediments insoluble in the usual organic solvents as opposed to extractable organic ...
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Kimmeridge Clay is arguably the most economically important unit of rocks in the whole of Europe since constitutes one of the main North Sea source rock, however over onshore England and Wales, it has log responses and distinctive physical properties. Such rocks are of prime interest to oil industry while...
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The Powder River Basin is located in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming. According to Luppens et al. (2008), the Powder River Basin is approximately 22,000 square miles in area. The basin itself trends in a north-to-north west direction. The eastern side of the basin dips gently westward, whereas the western side dips much more steeply towards the east. This forms an asymmetrical syncline with the synclinal axis lying closer to the western margin of the basin (USGS, 2013). The Powder River Basin is structurally separated from other basins by Laramide style tectonic landforms, where large portions of Archean basement rock were thrust upwards during the late Cretaceous and Paleocene (Flores, 2004). In Wyoming the Powder River Basin is surrounded by the Bighorn Mountains to the west, the Black Hills to the East, and the Laramie Mountains, Casper Arch, And Hartville Uplift to the South. To the north, in the Montana portion of the Powder River Basin, the Miles City Arch separates the basin from the Williston Basin in North Dakota. The coal beds that were deposited in the basin are mainly sub-bituminous but can also be lignite in rank and range from Cretaceous to Eocene in age. There are four formations that contain coal beds in the Powder River Basin and include the Mesaverde Formation, the Lance Formation, the Fort Union Formation, and the Wasatch Formation. Each of these formations contains several different coal ...
One of these factors was the logistical nightmare of redeveloping the infrastructure needed to transport oil to the refinery. As early as 1881, Standard oil operated approximately 3,000 miles of pipelines, eventually owning ninety percent of the nation’s pipelines. Although transcontinental railroads were an available alternative, pipelines were cheaper, reduced handling and storage fees, and were more efficient. The fact that modern oil companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars into speculating for sustainable natural oil deposits implies that such deposits are rare and hard to identify with a passing glance. If the spurts of oil proved to be isolated incidents, the capital invested in building pipelines and reestablishing a monopoly would have been squandered.
After the Second World War, the world was more interesting in oil than ever before. The conflict itself made the countries of the world realize that oil was a serious factor in the quest for power. From this point in history, oil was considered the driving force behind a successful economy and therefore attaining power. Therefore the quest for oil heightened during and after World War II. In the effort to acquire more oil, many countries began to seek out additional locations to drill and this drove the United States to the Middle East. In late 1943 a man named DeGolyer who was a geologist went on a mission to Saudi Arabia to survey the possibility for oil. His mission there concluded that “the oil in this region is the greatest single prize in all history”. With such a conclusion it is not surprising that the United States began extremely concerned with the oil concessions there.
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This area is known as the Permian Basin. Most of the oil is being produced from rocks
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