Identifying Gas-Washing and Water-Washing of Oil Reservoirs by Fluorescence and Infrared Spectra of Single Oil Inclusion

Samples in the two oil fields with reported gas-washing and water-washing were collected for fluid inclusion analysis.Micro-fluorescence and Fourier infrared spectra of single oil inclusions were measured to study the different effects of gas-washing and water-washing on oil compositions.The results show that spectral parameter QF_(535)values of the oils altered by gas-washing were expanded toward decreasing and increasing,respectively.The CH_(2)/CH_(3)distribution range ratio does not expand significantly,but the peak values are averaged.And the distribution of H_(2)O/Alkanes has no change.The QF_(535)values of the oils affected by water-washing increased towards the increase direction,and the distribution ranges of both CH_(2)/CH_(3)and H_(2)O/Alkanes increase significantly.The changes of QF_(535)in light oil reservoirs altered by gas-washing and CH_(2)/CH_(3)in heavy oil reservoirs by water-washing are not obvious.Therefore,two spectral parameter distribution trend charts of light and heavy oil reservoirs are summarized to discriminate the gas-washing and water-washing processes.This study is of great practical significance to utilize fluid inclusion analysis to restructure stages and processes of petroleum accumulation.

Nanoparticle-reinforced foam system for enhanced oil recovery(EOR):Mechanistic review and perspective

Boosted by economic development and rising living standards,the world's carbon dioxide emissions remain high.Maintaining temperature rises below 1.5℃ by the end of the century requires rapid global carbon capture and storage implementation.The successful application of carbon capture,utilization,and storage(CCUS)technology in oilfields has become the key to getting rid of this predicament.Foam flooding,as an organic combination of gas and chemical flooding,became popular in the 1950s.Notwithstanding the irreplaceable advantages,as a thermodynamically unstable system,foam's stability has long restricted its development in enhanced oil and gas recovery.With special surface/interface effects and small-size effects,nanoparticles can be used as foam stabilizers to enhance foam stability,thereby improving foam seepage and oil displacement effects in porous media.In this paper,the decay kinetics and the stabilization mechanisms of nanoparticle-reinforced foams were systematically reviewed.The effects of nanoparticle characteristics,including particle concentration,surface wettability,particle size,and type,and reservoir environment factors,including oil,temperature,pressure,and salinity on the foam stabilization ability were analyzed in detail.The seepage and flooding mechanisms of nanoparticle-reinforced foams were summarized as:improving the plugging properties of foams,enhancing the interaction between foams and crude oil,and synergistically adjusting the wettability of reservoir rocks.Finally,the challenges in the practical application of nanoparticle-reinforced foams were highlighted,and the development direction was proposed.The development of nanoparticle-reinforced foam can open the way toward adaptive and evolutive EOR technology,taking one further step towards the high-efficiency production of the petroleum industry.

The reservoir characteristics and their controlling factors of the sublacustrine fan in the Paleogene Dongying Formation, Bohai Sea,China

Sublacustrine fan is an important element in continental lacustrine basins and is significant for reservoir exploration. Oil and gas resources have been found in the sublacustrine fan sandstone reservoirs of the Paleogene Dongying Formation in the Bohai Sea. In this study, the characteristics of the sublacustrine fan reservoirs and the controlling factors are studied using information from logging, cores, physical properties,casting thin sections, X-ray diffraction of clay minerals, vitrinite reflectance, rock pyrolysis, manometry data,and 3D seismic data. The sublacustrine fans of the Dongying Formation in the LD10, QHD34, and BZ21 structures show high-quality reservoirs with porosity >15 % and permeability >5 m D. The main controlling factors of the high-quality reservoirs are attributed to the favorable sedimentary facies type and negligible compaction,and cementation, substantial dissolution of K-feldspar, overpressure, and the development of faults and fractures. A high-quality sublacustrine fan reservoir model has been established to explain how these factors affected the physical properties. The favorable targets for oil and gas exploration in the Dongying Formation of Bohai Sea include undercompacted sandy debris flow reservoirs showing the dissolution of K-feldspar, and the reservoirs which are connected to the source rocks by faults. This study provides insights to establish the relationship between sedimentology, diagenesis and reservoir quality. The results of this study are significant for the exploration and development of the sublacustrine fan sandstone reservoirs in the Bohai Sea and analogous sandstone reservoirs elsewhere.

Evolution of the Pearl River and its Implication for East Asian Continental Landscape Reversion

As the link connecting the South China Continent and the northern South China Sea(SCS),the Pearl River is the focus of sedimentology and petroleum geology research.Its evolutionary process and controlling factors are of great significance in revealing the East Asian continental landscape reorganization during the Late Cenozoic.Based on published data,’source-to-sink’provenance analyses allow systematic deliberation on the birth and evolutionary history of the Pearl River.Close to the Oligocene/Miocene boundary,an abrupt shift in the sedimentary composition indicates significant westward and northward expansion of the river’s watershed area,followed by the establishment of a near-modern fluvial network.This sedimentary change generally concurred with a series of regional geological events,including the onset of the Yangtze throughflow,large-scale development of the loess plateau,and formation of the northwestern arid zone and Asian Monsoon system.These major changes in the geology-climate-ecoenvironment system are in close response to the process of the Cenozoic Xizang(Tibetan)Plateau uplift.Consequently,the East Asian continental landscape and most of midCenozoic drainage systems underwent critical reversion into east-tilting,or east-flowing networks.

Evolution regularity of the Neogene shallow water delta in the Laibei area, Bohai Bay Basin, northern China

According to the characteristics of sedimentary microfacies, unique vertical depositional sequences and well logging response, the authors propose that a shallow water delta was widely developed in the Neogene of the Laibei area, Bohai Bay Basin of northern China. Based on seismic minimum amplitude slices, well logging data, test analytical data and so forth, detailed research on the evolution of the shallow water delta of the Neogene Lower Member of Minghuazhen Formation was conducted. The results indicate that the third-order sequence base level controls sandbody types. During a period of low base level, a distribu- tary channel sandbody of shallow water deltaic plain was developed. With base level rising, the sandbody type gradually changed into a subaqueous distributary channel sandbody and a sheet sand can be found as well. The fourth-order sequence base level controls mediumshort term evolution of the sandbody. Within a sequence, due to the rising and falling of base level, the sandbody assemblages are identified as an upward-coarsening type, an upwardfining and a compound type respectively. Regionally, from the Laibei Low Uplift to the Huang- hekou Sag, the shallow water delta evoluted from a dendritic shape, to a cuspate shape and finally to a sheet shape.

Cretaceous Oceanic Red Beds:Distribution,Lithostratigraphy and Paleoenvironments

Cretaceous oceanic red beds （CORBs） represented by red shales and marls, were deposited during the Cretaceous and early Paleocene, predominantly in the Tethyan realm, in lower slope and abyssal basin environments. Detailed studies of CORBs are rare; therefore, we compiled CORBs data from deep sea ocean drilling cores and outcrops of Cretaceous rocks subaerially exposed in southern Europe, northwestern Germany, Asia and New Zealand. In the Tethyan realm, CORBs mainly consist of reddish or pink shales, limestones and marlstones. By contrast, marlstones and chalks are rare in deep-ocean drilling cores. Upper Cretaceous marine sediments in cores from the Atlantic Ocean are predominantly various shades of brown, reddish brown, yellowish brown and pale brown in color. A few red, pink, yellow and orange Cretaceous sediments are also present. The commonest age of CORBs is early Campanian to Maastrichtian, with the onset mostly of oxic deposition often after Oceanic Anoxic Events （OAEs）, during the early Aptian, late Albian-early Turonian and Campanian. This suggests an indicated and previously not recognized relationship between OAEs, black shales deposition and CORBs. CORBs even though globally distributed, are most common in the North Atlantic and Tethyan realms, in low to mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere; in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean in the mid to high latitudes of the southern hemisphere; and are less frequent in the central Pacific Ocean. Their widespread occurrence during the late Cretaceous might have been the result of establishing a connection for deep oceanic current circulation between the Pacific and the evolving connection between South and North Atlantic and changes in oceanic basins ventilation.

Development characteristics and controlling factor analysis of the Neogene Minghuazhen Formation shallow water delta in Huanghekou area, Bohai offshore basin

Based on a combination of high resolution 3-D seismic, drilling and well logging and core data, this study focuses on describing the depositional features of the Neogene Minghuazhen Formation shallow water delta in Huanghekou area(HHKA), Bohai offshore basin and discussing the evolution and controlling factors of shallow water delta sandbody. An obvious meandering fluvial delta system developed in sequence 1(SQ1) of the Neogene in HHKA with thinner sandbody of distributary channels and poor development of mouth bar. The sequence texture obviously influences the vertical development and stacking pattern of sandbodies and controls the distribution of sandbodies in plain view as well. In shallow water lacustrine basins, relative topographic height difference leads to change of distribution of accommodation space, and sandbodies of distributary channels usually develop well in local low-lying areas where accommodation space increases. The delta is dominated by distributary channel sandbodies during the early period of base level rising. Sandbodies contact with each other in a lateral stacking pattern and are characterized by a fan shape in plain view. Distributary channels gradually narrow and tend to shift during the mid-late-period of base level rising, while the sandbodies are characterized by a net shape in plain view. During the period of base level slow falling, the multistory/multilateral channel sandbodies dominated the inner front of shallow-water delta and the delta sand dispersal distributes as a lobe shape.

Geologic-seismic models,prediction of shallow-water lacustrine delta sandbody and hydrocarbon potential in the Late Miocene,Huanghekou Sag,Bohai Bay Basin,northern China

The Huanghekou Sag is located at the southeast part of the Bohai Bay Basin, northern China. Large-scale shallow lake delta developed in the Neogene provided suitable geological conditions for the formation of a subtle oil-gas reservoir in this area. The key for analyzing sandstone reservoir and sedimentary facies is by using seismic attributes(amplitude) to establish the relationship between lithology combination and seismic attributes. The lower unit of Late Miocene Minghuazhen Formation at the BZ34 block in the Huanghekou Sag was subdivided into 10 parasequence sets(PSS). Thicker sandstones mainly occurred in PSS1 and PSS10, whereas thin sandstones are mostly observed within other parasequence sets. This study presents statistics and analyses of lithology, i.e., statistics of root-meansquare(RMS) amplitude and lithology of well locations in different parasequence sets of the study area,as well as 1-D forward seismic models of 7 types of lithology combinations, the establishment of a spatial distribution of 2-D sandbody, forward seismic models etc. Our study indicates that high amplitude peaks correspond to thicker sandbodies, while low amplitude indicates non-development of sandbodies(generally less than 2 m), and medium amplitude agrees well with large sets of mudstones interbedded with medium and thinner sandstones. Different sand-mudstone combinations genetically reflect a combination of multiple micro-facies, therefore, amplitude features can predict sandbodies as well as facies characteristics.

Velocity anomaly analysis on low-amplitude structure and its application in Bohai Sea:a case study on QHD33-1S structure

Varying degree of velocity anomalies has been appeared in Shijiutuo uplift in Bohai Sea,which is mainly demonstrated in the inconsistent between seismic interpretation and the actual drilling depth.In this paper, QHD33-1S area is taken as the example.First of all,the main reason that causes the velocity anomaly phenomena is the effect of sand-formation ratio by forward model analysis,and then technical approaches to improve the accuracy of the velocity field and the degree of understanding of anomalies are further explored,resulting in more precise determination of horizontal variation trend of the velocity in QHD33-1S area.Consequences of actual applications indicate that through the accurate analysis of the velocity anomaly,we can not only realize the fine description of low-amplitude structure,but also the effective prediction of the hydrocarbon-bearing properties of the reservoir.Meanwhile,the results also have a certain significance for the other low-amplitude structures in Bohai Sea.

Climate tipping-point potential and paradoxical production of methane in a changing ocean

The global warming potential of methane(CH_4) is about 30 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide(CO2) over a century timescale. Methane emission is hypothesized to have contributed to global climate change events and mass extinctions during Earth's history. Therefore, the study of CH_4 production processes is critically important to the understanding of global climate change. It has been a dogma that biogenic CH_4 detectable in the oceans originates exclusively from the anaerobic metabolic activity of methanogenic archaea in hypoxic and anoxic environments, despite reports that many oxic surface and near-surface waters of the world's oceans are CH_4-supersaturated, thereby rendering net sea-to-air emissions of CH_4. The phenomenon of CH_4 production in oxic marine waters is referred to as the "ocean methane paradox". Although still not totally resolved, recent studies have generated several hypotheses regarding the sources of CH_4 production in oxic seawater. This review will summarize our current understanding of the importance of CH_4 in the global climate and analyze the biological processes and their underpinning mechanisms that lead to the production of CH_4 in oxic seawater environments. We will also tentatively explore the relationships of these microbial metabolic processes with global changes in climate and environment.