Reservoir Continuity Assessment and Production Surveillance Using Geochemical Fingerprinting

Fundamentals of geochemical fingerprinting in the oil industry have been described by several authors and while detailed workflows vary between users the overall approach of combining gas chromatography with software supported interpretation remains common. The primary applications of geochemical fingerprinting include production back-allocation, support of wider reservoir continuity studies or time-lapse geochemistry. Our methodology is based on analysis of whole oil (black oil, gas condensate, heavy oil) or organic extracts from rock/sediment for the determination of ratios of heights of neighbouring chromatographic peaks. This novel approach using geochemical fingerprinting in combination with a new data processing technology is presented through a selection of diverse case studies and demonstrates that it can be applied with confidence to even the most challenging production back-allocation and reservoir continuity cases. Numerous tests and calibrations with various oil companies have been carried out to improve the methodology and increase the overall accuracy, robustness and global applicability.