Sedimentary association of alternated mudstones and tight sandstones in China’s oil and gas bearing basins and its natural gas accumulation

Abstract

Oil and gas resources are abundant in China’s continental sedimentary basins, where the main task of exploration has been finding oil for many years. In recent years, however, new discoveries of large-scale natural gas have been successively obtained. The natural gas mainly exists in the sedimentary association of alternated mudstones and tight sandstones and is dominantly low-permeability tight sand gas. Through the in-depth study on gas reservoir analysis, diagenetic evolution, source rock distribution and hydrocarbon-generating behavior, natural gas generation and accumulation, it is concluded that, during the major subsiding stage of large scale lake basins, the multicyclic subsiding process of the lake surface controls the development of high quality source rocks, the wide distribution of sands, and the superimposition of the two types of rocks in the vertical direction. The lacustrine muddy source rocks are developed, including mud shale, carbonaceous mudstone and coal bed which are in the medium–high evolution stage and produce mainly gas and the gas generation intensity is high. Through the analysis of the subsidence evolution processes of the Carboniferous–Permian Systems (transitional marine–continental facies) in the Ordos Basin and the Triassic Xujiahe Formation (continental facies) in the Sichuan Basin, it is concluded that the widely distributed sandbodies of delta facies, although with tight properties, are interbedded with source rocks and easy to accumulate natural gases. The natural gas is migrated and accumulated within small distance, and is characterized by large-area accumulation. Because of the strong hydrocarbon generation capacity, big thickness and stable distribution of the underlying mud shale, the potential of gas resources should not be underestimated. The geocyclicity of China’s continental sedimentary basins controls the sedimentary association of alternated mudstones and tight sandstones, resulting in superimposed accumulations of shale gas and tight sand gas.