Estimation of Undiscovered Hydrocarbon Resources Potential through Fractal Geometry Based on GIS

Abstract

The clustered objects in nature are often fractal. Oil-gas reservoir’s distribution in space is inhomogeneous, always occurs in groups. Therefore, in this paper, we use the theory of Fractal Geometry and Nonlinear Regression method to estimate the unproved oil and gas resources in the study area. As the steps of using Fractal Geometry to predict the oil and gas resources is complex and involve not only spatial data but also attribute data such as oil-gas reservoir’s spatial location and reserves, it’s hard to put it into practice. Geographic Information System (GIS) has a powerful spatial analysis capacity and efficient Geodatabase, it can simplify the process and reduce difficulties of the Fractal Geometry methods. This paper presents a GIS-based Fractal Geometry method to estimate the reserves of potential oil and gas resources and applies this method to estimate the undiscovered oil-gas reserves in Jinhu Sag, North Jiangsu Basin. The result shows Jinhu Sag’s oil and gas reserves are about 3343×104t, still has some exploration potentials. Finally we verify the practicability and validity of Fractal Geometry method by comparing with the results has been taken by other researchers in the past years.