No more wasted effort
24 Jul 2003
A new technique, applied to oil exploration for the first time, has the potential to save exploration companies millions of dollars in wasted effort.
The approach uses a highly sensitive method of determining the thermal history of the rocks in the Earth's crust, from which oil is generated. Petroleum companies need thermal history information to assess the most likely prospects to drill, or perhaps more realistically, where not to drill.
The technique, called U-Th-He thermo-chronology, first developed by academia, is now being implemented by scientists from CSIRO and Geotrack International for application in the petroleum industry.
Helium (He) is a natural fission product of Uranium (U) and Thorium (Th) decay. Age relationships of minerals can be determined by measuring the concentrations of both the parent (U and Th) and daughter (He) elements in them. The major benefit is that it is possible to quantitatively determine the low temperature thermal histories of mineral belts and petroleum basins. It is also possible to identify the most recent event that occurred in a basin and its possible effects on petroleum migration.
'What we do is to save time elsewhere by providing firm thermal history constraints. Most companies spend days modelling different scenarios and risking the outcomes. The application of this technique can reduce the time required by showing which scenarios are likely and which are not possible,' says Geotrack scientist Dr. Paul Green.
Several pilot studies and commercial analyses using the technique have been successfully completed on basins in Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and Colombia.
