Map based charge risking
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Charge Volumes -- Modeling or Risking
The volumes of charge for a petroleum prospect depends on the source rock properties (quality, richness, thickness and maturity). There are usually tremendous degree of uncertainty regarding source rock properties since we may not have a large number of wells penetrating the source interval. And some times we are not even sure of the existence of the source rock. The traditional deterministic basin modeling approach has been proven to be unreliable in providing a quantitative charge estimate. For this reason, most explorationists use a probabilistic approach to calculate a distribution of charge volumes to show the probability of an economical success for their prospects. A typical result shows the probability of oil or gas charge exceeding certain volumes:
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Why Map Based Charge Risking
The thickness and maturity of the source rock may vary laterally within the fetch area. The variation of maturity is also controlled by the lateral geometry of geological structure. The variables hydrocarbon volumes are dependent upon are interdependent and such dependency is controlled by the geometric shape of the structure surfaces.
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From this schematic figure, we can see that if the maturity of the kitchen is to increase either by a deeper burial or a higher thermal gradient, the mature area is bound to increase as well. As the maturity increases and the oil window moves upward in stratigraphy, the relative change in oil and gas charge also will a function of the source geometry. For these reasons, traditional charge risking tools (mostly developed as Excel plug-ins or a 1D approach such as BasinRisk) are mostly inadequate.
What can we do ?
Trinity is the only commercially available map based risking software. It combines the