Characteristics and differential accumulation of oil/gas in Lower Paleozoic marine carbonate on northern slope of Tazhong Low Rise, Tarim Basin, NW China: a case study of Lower Ordovician Yingshan Formation

Abstract

Marine carbonate reservoirs, as a focus of petroleum exploration and development all over the world, are involved with high exploration risk and prediction difficulty owing to high heterogeneity and diversity of reservoir beds. In the Tarim Basin, NW China, carbonate reservoirs with resources about 38 % of the whole basin in a large prospecting area are mainly distributed in the Cambrian and Ordovician in central (Tazhong) and northern (Tabei) Tarim. Recently on the northern slope, Tazhong Low Rise, Central Uplift, Tarim Basin, a breakthrough has been made in the karsted weathering crust of Lower Ordovician Yingshan Formation and reef-flat reservoir of Upper Ordovician Lianglitag Formation. As a new frontier of exploration, oil/gas distribution and controlling factors of carbonate reservoirs in the Yingshan Formation are not clearly understood. In this work, play elements of the Yingshan Formation, such as seal-reservoir bed assemblage, oil/gas properties, and faulting, were studied by core and slice observation and field investigation. High-quality reservoir beds of Yingshan Formation are quasi-layer distributed in the interstratal karst belt about 250 m below the unconformity. The reservoir beds of fracture–void and void are formed by faulting, associated fracturing, and karstification. The Yingshan Formation is a large-scale condensate gas reservoir with partly oil. Owing to different oil–gas infilling periods, isolated pools far from the faults are primarily oil in the Hercynian; oppositely, condensate gas reservoirs near the faults are intensely influenced by gas invasion during the Himalayan movement. Laterally, oil/gas distribution is controlled by stratal pinch-out and strike-slip faults. Vertically, cap rock of the third to fifth members of the Lianglitag Formation and Yingshan interior high resistivity layers are superimposed with Yingshan reservoir beds to form several seal-reservoir bed assemblages. Oil and gas are superimposed and affected by gas invasion with characteristics of oil in the upper horizon and gas in the lower horizon.