Advances and Challenges for Basin Modeling

The present day challenge of petroleum system modeling is the improvement of the physics that is accounted for in the numerical models. Here are presented some improvements imposed by case studies in order to provide better estimations of the risk and of the uncertainties during petroleum system evaluation. In order to address the evaluation of the gas in place and to estimate the uncertainties, some new physics have been added to the existing tool. In particular, the model is now able to account for adsorbed gas and allows computing the organic porosity as a result of the maturity. Based on microscopic considerations we developed a macroscopic model of microbial gas generation in which hydrocarbons are generated through first order kinetic reactions at low maturity. Accounting for non HC components such as CO2 and N2 allows the model to be more accurate in term of fluid composition. As a consequence, the economic risk is better evaluated