HEAT FLOW ANOMALIES IN OIL- AND GAS-BEARING STRUCTURES

Abstract

The main features of the distribution of heat flow values in oil, gas and gas-condensate fields on the continents have been discussed by Makarenko and Sergiyenko. The method of analysis used made it possible to establish that the presence of hydrocarbons in formations leads to high heat-flow, regardless of the age of folding of the potentially oil- and gas-bearing zones. Only in regions adjacent to marginal Cenozoic folded mountain structures and in zones of Cenozoic volcanism is the world average higher, by 2.5 to 10%, than in the oil- and gas-bearing structures in those regions. The earlier analysis of the distribution of heat flow values in oil and gas structures was based on 403 measurements. The author now has nearly doubled the sample population, enabling him substantially to revise the ideas on the distribution of heat flow values and the development of the thermal regime of local oil and gas structures. He notes that the method previously used, comparing heat flow values on young continental platforms with values in local oil and gas structures, makes it possible to estimate the thermal effect of the presence of oil and gas. This conclusion stems from the fact that the overwhelming majority ofmore » heat flow measurements were made on various kinds of positive structural forms, and distortions of the thermal field caused by thermal anisotropy phenomena are equally characteristic of both productive and nonproductive structures. As a result, for the first time a continuous time series of heat flow measurements over oil and gas structures in various tectonic regions, with ages of consolidation ranging from the Precambrian to the Cenozoic, was established. 26 references.« less