Petroleum Systems through the Value Chain from Exploration to Refinery

By

 Andy Pepper¹

(1) BP Upstream Technology, Houston, TX

 Petroleum Systems, from BP’s perspective, is an integration technology that brings together geology, geochemistry and basin modeling to formulate a holistic model of the basin’s petroleum fluid system.

Classically, application of petroleum systems has impacted mainly the exploration business, in the areas of source rock, access to charge, product type, etc. However, understanding seal capacity constraints expands the impact into the area of prospect volumetrics; an understanding of detailed product composition (both gas and stock-tank liquids) further impacts prospect value. Well cost is further impacted through well design constraints imposed by the results of pressure prediction.

Moving into reservoir exploitation (appraisal / development / production), the role is much larger than providing a reservoir fingerprinting study: integration of oil and gas chemistry with pressure data, the filling history from the basin model and the structural and stratigraphic architecture of the reservoir container all need to be considered. The reservoir itself is a petroleum system!

Downstream, forward predictions of assay parameters such as sulfur, nitrogen, metals content and acid number in stock-tank liquid streams and ethane in gas streams are of great use to forward planning in marketing and refining.