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Title: Geochemistry of oil occurrences, National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska

Journal Article · · United States Geological Survey, Professional Paper; (USA)
OSTI ID:6958706

Recently the authors extended the geochemical characterization of North Slope oils beyond the Prudhoe Bay field. They suggested that two types of genetic families of oil exist, a Barrow-Prudhoe type and a Simpson-Umiat type. In this chapter, they update and expand the geochemical characterization of crude oil from the NPRA. Several oil samples from drill-stem tests and production tests are included here that were unavailable for the earlier study. In addition, they extracted oil from oil-stained cores. The purpose of this study is to apply petroleum geochemical data to group the different NPRA oil occurrences into genetically related types or families. Genetically related oil types are those that are derived from the same source rock or source-rock sequence. The analytical techniques used in this study are described in appendix 21.1. The five kinds of geochemical analyses used in the present study are: (1) stable isotope abundances (C, S, N), (2) percent sulfur and nitrogen, (3) hydrocarbon molecular distributions, (4) compound-type analysis, and (5) API gravity. In general, the order of this list is from more to less dependence on specific properties of the parent organic matter in the source rock, and from lesser to greater sensitivity to the effects of such secondary processes as migration, biodegradation, or degree of maturation.

OSTI ID:
6958706
Journal Information:
United States Geological Survey, Professional Paper; (USA), Journal Name: United States Geological Survey, Professional Paper; (USA)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English