Past, present, and future of basin and petroleum system modeling

Abstract

Basin and petroleum system modeling (BPSM) has had increasing impact on industry decisions related to exploration and new venture opportunities over the last decade. Basin and petroleum system modeling technology, usability, and user group size have grown as a result of its capacity to reduce exploration risk. Based on current statistics, improvements in BPSM have significant potential to reduce future well failures, particularly when caused by lack of petroleum charge. To bring BPSM practitioners from academia and industry together, an AAPG Hedberg Research Conference was organized to discuss the latest developments and issues in this field. A survey was conducted during the conference in Santa Barbara, California (April 2016), and this paper summarizes the results. A key takeaway was an overarching consensus throughout the BPSM community that improved understanding of hydrocarbon migration and more flexible workflows are necessary to better assess charge and migration risk in exploration and new ventures. In addition, BPSM is increasingly used to predict pore pressure and porosity at field scales, which opens new opportunities to integrate BPSM workflows with other technologies, such as seismic rock property analysis and reservoir quality modeling. In this paper, we discuss these and other issues that arose from in-depth discussion and an online survey.