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Oil and gas for the future – the role of petroleum geologists in the oil industry
Abstract
Oil and gas have been the most important energy resource of the 20th century and will continue to be so in the
21th century. Petroleum geologists play a key role in exploring for oil and gas and the development and
production of oil and gas fields.
The work of a petroleum geologist can be compared to a detective’s investigation, where the subsurface
occurrence and distribution of oil and gas have to be predicted mostly by indirect evidence. A mature source rock, a migration pathway, a trap, a reservoir and a seal need to be present for any conventional petroleum
accumulation and all these elements have to work in the right sequence.
Successfully finding oil and gas, calls for the integration of a wide set of geological and geophysical disciplines,
including organic geochemistry, basin analysis, sedimentary petrology, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy and
structural geology to remote sensing and seismic interpretation. To achieve this, petroleum geologists utilize a
wide array of tools and cutting-edge technology, ranging all the way from satellite imagery to high resolution 3D
seismic data.
A solid and broad geological background with strong basic discipline training is a pre-requisite for a successful
petroleum geologist. Any “specialist” training will happen at the beginning and throughout the industry career.
... Understanding the subsurface is crucial for oil and gas production and discoveries, and geoscience plays a significant part in this [7][8] [9]. The purpose of exploration is to get deeper insight into the processes of gas and oil formation, movement, and trapping in subterranean reservoirs [10] [11]. ...
The discovery of more hydrocarbon wells remains a major recipe to boost the economy of Nigeria, a major oil producer in Africa. The seismic method is prominent for identifying traps in the oil explorations, but cannot indicate if the trap host hydrocarbon. This gap is usually filled by the radiometric method, its characteristics around the Kolmani well 1 have hitherto not been reported. This research focused on identifying promising locations for hydrocarbon accumulation around the Kolmani Well 1 while using the well as a control. To achieve the objectives of this research, the nature of the radioelements was observed over the Kolmani well1 and the outcome of normalizing potential and uranium was also identified. The average values of potassium (K), thorium (Th), and uranium (U) are 0.277%, 8.917 ppm, and 1.431 ppm respectively. The concentration of the three radioelements, K, Th, and U, decreases over the oil well. This was ascribed to enhanced leaching of natural radioelements caused by hydrocarbon-generated groundwater acids. The result of the normalization of K with Th yields a low concentration of K over the Kolmani well1 and the normalization of U with Th yields a high concentration of U over the Kolmani well1. These were in tandem with the report on the application of the method in previous locations. Hence, the results of the normalization of K and U were used to identify four locations with potential for hydrocarbon exploration. The viability of these locations was confirmed with the positive DRAD (Delineation of Radiometric anomalies) value (ranging from -5.1 to +5.2), a pointer to hydrocarbon accumulation in an area, recorded in these locations and the location of the Kolmani well 1.
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