Hydrocarbon Generation Characteristics of Source Rocks from Different Saline Environments in the Dongpu Depression, Bohai Bay Basin, China

Abstract

AbstractThe Dongpu Depression is a secondary salt‐bearing tectonic unit in the Bohai Bay Basin, eastern China. The depositional environment of this depression regarding its Paleogene strata is clearly different in plane, including the saltwater environment (SE) in the north, the freshwater environment (FE) in the south and the brackish water environment (BE) in the middle. The result of oil and gas exploration in the Dongpu Depression shows that more than 90% of the proven oil reserves are distributed in the northern saltwater environment. Previous studies indicate that the organic geochemistry characteristics and the hydrocarbon generation capacity of the source rocks are very clearly diverse under different environments, which results in the significant differences in the proved reserves between the north and the south. In order to further explore the differences in the hydrocarbon generation capacity of the source rocks under distinct depositional environments and the mechanism of their occurrence, three samples from different depositional environments (W18‐5 for SE, H7‐18 for BE, CH9 for FE) were used for confined gold tube pyrolysis experiments. The results show that the CH4 yields of W18‐5, H7‐18 and CH9 increase with increasing temperature, the maximum yields being 405.62 mg/g TOC, 388.56 mg/g TOC and 367.89 mg/g TOC, respectively. The liquid hydrocarbon yields of W18‐5, H7‐18 and CH9 firstly increase with increasing temperature and then decrease after the critical temperatures. The maximum yields of C6–14 are 149.54 mg/g TOC, 140.18 mg/g TOC and 116.94 mg/g TOC, the maximum yields of C14+ being 852.4 mg/g TOC, 652.6 mg/g TOC and 596.41mg/g TOC, respectively for W18‐5, H7‐18 and CH9. To summarize, the order of hydrocarbon potential from high to low is W18‐5, H7‐18 and CH9. On this basis, through analyzing the influencing factors of hydrocarbon differences, this paper reveals that the saltwater environment is characterized by 4 factors: higher salinity, halophilic algae, high paleo‐productivity and a strongly reducing environment, which are beneficial to the enrichment of organic matter and lead to the formation of high levels of sapropelite and exinite. According to the variation of oil and gas components in the pyrolysis experiments, the hydrocarbon generation process is divided into three stages: kerogen cracking, oil cracking and C2–5 cracking. Combined with hydrocarbon generation characteristics and stages, the evolutionary model of hydrocarbon generation for source rocks under different environments is established.