Track: Petroleum
The Application of GIS to a Material Balance Study of the Illinois Basin
Mitch HenryThis study was undertaken as an attempt to develop a more quantitative understanding of petroleum generation, expulsion, and losses in the New Albany Shale/Mississippian petroleum system of the Illinois Basin. Throughout the project extensive use of ArcInfo was made for map display and analysis of the various data sets used for this study. These data sets included hydrogen index values at point locations in the basin, isopach maps of thicknesses of the three members of the New Albany shale, and a map showing the extent of mature New Albany shale. Standard functions of ArcInfo were used to generate point, polygon, and line covers of several data sets, and the display modules were used to create maps of these data. We used ARC TIN and ARC GRID functions to manipulate data in order to generate a hydrogen index (HI) contour map of the New Albany shale, to calculate the volume of source rock that had reached thermal maturity. The amount of petroleum generated was then calculated. Because of the relationship between HI values and thermal maturity, the HI contours were used as a proxy for depth of burial of the New Albany shale at the time that thermal maturity was reached. This contour surface was used as input to the ArcInfo watershed modeling utility to generate areas we refer to as oil catchments, which we see as analogous to watersheds. These catchments represent general areas toward which expelled petroleum should migrate under the influence of buoyancy. By breaking the basin up into these oil catchments we believe that we can better evaluate the data on probable volumes of petroleum generated, those that have been discovered, and those that may exist in the basin as undiscovered deposits. This allows a clearer look at those volumes with respect to the geological conditions that exist within the catchment areas.
Mitch Henry
MS939
USGS Box 25046
Denver, CO 80225
USA
Telephone: 303-236-5793
Fax:
E-mail: email-henry@usgs.gov