Full Title: Clay Minerals from the Perspective of Oil and Gas Exploration
Author(s): Shu Jiang
Publisher(s): Intech
Publication Date: January 1, 2012
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Description (excerpt):
The clay minerals e.g. kaolinite, smectite, illite, chlorite, etc. are ubiquitous in the targeting rocks of oil and gas exploration. During the early age (1940s) of worldwide oil exploration, clay minerals were studied to predict the quality of organic rick source rock and generation mechanism when scientists tried to investigate the origin of oil and gas (Grim, 1947, Brooks, 1952). Then the clay minerals analysis was used as a tool in terms of environmental determination, stratigraphic correlation and hydrocarbon generation zone identification to find exploration target interval, which was preliminarily and generally summarized by Weaver in 1960. By the 1970s, the clay minerals began to be widely studied for diagenesis and reservoir quality prediction due to the application of petrological analysis and quantitative mineralogical analysis by X-ray diffraction (Griffin, 1971; Pettijohn, 1975; Heald and Larese, 1974; Bloch et al., 2002). Since 1980s, the clay minerals analysis has been used to determine the hydrocarbon emplacement time and petroleum system analysis (Lee et al., 1985). These intermittent clay minerals research progresses are the result of exploration demands of conventional reservoirs (sandstone and carbonate rocks) at different times.