Remote Sensing Techniques and Petroleum Exploration
Ye Hefei, Cao Yu
Department of Remote Sensing Geology,
Research Institute
of Petroleum Exploration and Development , Beijing , China
Abstract
The paper briefly deals with application and result of remote sensing techniques income inland petroliferous basins in China. Based on some examples, important roles of remote sensing techniques presented, such as in studies of regional geological settings of pre-exploration of petroliferous basins, petroleum geological conditions concerning temporal and spatial regulations and mechanism of basin formation, structural features of basin, distribution of oil-bearing structural zones, analogy and analysis of image characteristics of known oil field as well as prediction of new oil fields. Particularly, starting with the theory of surface inter-growth effects of petroleum micro-seeping, the paper tries to probe the practices of remote sensing techniques in oil discovery and to demonstrate that the application of the techniques in petroleum exploration is very wide and will become an indispensable exploration method.
Introduction
Although the technology is very late to use in the application of the petroleum industry in China, a lot of satisfactory works have been done since we began studying the remote sensing petroleum geology in the Tarim basin of Xinjiang in 1978. We have studied petroleum geology in an area of 3.5 million sq km covering 15 provinces and regions such as the Qinghai, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shandong, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi, concerned various geomorphological features, different tectonic units and sedimentry basins in different time, and gained a great deal of first-hand data related to structural zones and ten thousand faults, and some plays with good prospects and oil-bearing structural zones have been predicted. The practices have proved that the remote sensing techniques play very important roles not only in the studies of petroleum geological conditions of preexploration including researches on regional geological settings of petroliferous basins, structural features, distribution of oil-bearing structural zones, analysis and analogy of image characteristics of known oil-bearing structural zones, analysis and analogy of image characteristics of known oil fields as well as the prediction of new oil fields. Meanwhile, as remote sensing images posses characteristics of realty, microscope and visualization and comparative analysis of multiple temporal phases, the techniques also have wide applications in engineering designing, oil exploration and environmental survey. Here we mainly discuss geological problems in petroleum exploitation.
Roles of Remote Sensing Techniques in Selection of Petroleum Exploration Targets
The selection of effective exploration targets is an important step to achieve success in oil exploration. The selections are dependent on studies of basic petroleum geological conditions. Petroleum geologists generally consider basins to be a basic geological unit of petroleum exploration and their main tasks is to find and determine various sedimentary basins. The remote sensing images have characteristics of realty and macroscope that provide accurate and visual data for directly determining geometric shapes of sedimentary basins. The remote sensing techniques are more effective and useful for understanding and studying those basins in the out-of-the-way mountains and remote deserts, such as the Tarim basin in northwest China.
The Tarim basin, located between the Tianshan Mountains and Kunlan Mountains, is a huge sedimentary basin with an area of 0,56 million sq.km. The surface of the basin is widely covered by the quaternary, and two thirds of that is occupied by deserts. Basin beasement is of the presinian metamorphic rocks, and basin fillings consist of the palaeozoic, meaozoic and Cenozoic sediments with a thikness 0f 15,000m. Based on drilling data, we find that the lithologic features of sediments within the basin are basically same with that of corresponding sediments outside the basin. Commercial oil flows have been found all in the Palaeozoic , Mesozoic and Cenozoic strata. The basin in characterized by even light colour in a standard pseudo-coloured ,mosaic map, with a distinct outline by comparison with the mountains outsied the basin that are characterized by dark colours and complex schieren textures. In addition, three faults (Quiemo,South Quiemo and Arjinfault) developed in direction of NEE in southwest basin, the south Qiemo fault intersect Arjinfault in acute angle, and are especially clear and eye-catching.
According to the statistics, 86 circular structures are interpreted in the west basin, among them, 15 structures coincide with the surface structures and 40 structures are related with concealed structures determined by geophysical methods. The success rate can reach 64%. It is necessary to point out that No. 168 concealed structure that has produced oil was first discovered by the remote sensing data.
