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US 2021/0063378 A1Published application
Age Differentiation of Late Cretaceous-Tertiary Sourced Oils
AssigneeExxonMobil Upstream Research Company
InventorsChun Zhu, Weixuan Li
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An angiosperm index-1 and an angiosperm index-2 are correlated to an age of a liquid hydrocarbon sample and can be used to distinguish oil age of Late Cretaceous (100-65 million years before present, or 100-65 Ma BP) vs. Paleogene (65-55 Ma BP) vs. Eocene or younger (<55 Ma BP). This method improves over existing methods that cannot distinguish oil age between Late Cretaceous and Miocene (ca. 100-5 Ma BP).
Claims11
A method comprising:
- measuring a concentration of oleanane (O), C29 30-nor-neohopane (H29 Ts), bicadalenes and methyl-bicadalenes (B), and C27 22,29,30-tris-nor-neohopane (Ts) in a hydrocarbon sample;
- calculating an angiosperm index-1=[O]/([O]+[H29 Ts]) and an angiosperm index-2=[O]+[B]/([O]+[B]+[Ts]);
- and
- estimating an age of the hydrocarbon sample based on a relationship between hydrocarbon age and the angiosperm index-1 and the angiosperm index-2.
1 more element
A method comprising:
- obtaining a hydrocarbon sample from a hydrocarbon seep;
- measuring a concentration of oleanane (O), C29 30-nor-neohopane (H29 Ts), bicadalenes and methyl-bicadalenes (B), and C27 22,29,30-tris-nor-neohopane (Ts) in the hydrocarbon sample;
- calculating an angiosperm index-1=[O]/([O]+[H29 Ts]) and an angiosperm index-2=[O]+[B]/([O]+[B]+[Ts]);
- estimating an age of the hydrocarbon sample based on a relationship between hydrocarbon age and the angiosperm index-1 and the angiosperm index-2;
- and
- determining from the estimated age the source rock from which the hydrocarbons originated.
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Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.