Abstract
The Songliao Basin contains some of the largest volumes of oil shales in China; however, these energy sources are located in areas covered by arable land, meaning that the best way of exploiting them is likely to be environmentally friendly in situ conversion processing (ICP). Whether the oil shales of the Songliao Basin in the Qingshankou Formation are suitable for ICP remain controversial. In this paper, through sequence stratigraphic correlations, three main thick oil shale layers (N1, N2, and N3) of the Sequence1 (Sq1) unit in the first member of Qingshankou Formation (K2qn1) are confirmed as consistently present throughout the Southeastern Uplift region of the basin. The spectral trend attributes reflect that the lake reached a maximum flood surface of the K2qn1 in N2 oil shale layer, and the total organic carbon (TOC) and Fischer assay (FA) oil yield are significantly increasing. The N2 and N3 oil shale layers were deposited in a high lake level environment associated with ingressions of ocean water. The oil shale in these layers with the characteristics of high TOC (maximum of 23.9 wt %; average of 7.2 wt %), abundance of aquatic organic matter (OM) (maximum hydrogen index (HI) of 1080.2 mg/g; average of 889.9 mg/g) and carbonate contents (maximum of 29.5%; average of 15.4%). The N2 and N3 oil shale layers have higher brittleness index (BI) values (generally 40–50%), larger cumulative thicknesses (maximum of 13.3 m; average of 12.0 m), and much higher source potential index (SPI) values (0.92 and 0.88 tHC/m2, respectively) than the N1 oil shale layer within Sq1 transgressive system tracts (TST), indicating that the N2 and N3 layers are prospective targets for ICP. In addition, oil shales buried to depths of <1000 m have strong hydrocarbon generation capacities that make them suitable for ICP.
Highlights
The future of domestic oil supplies in China is currently uncertain as a result of a lack of discovery of high-quality oil reserves and difficulties in maintaining stable hydrocarbon production despite the fact that China has vast oil shale resources [1]
Comparison, the highstand system tracts (HST) are the dominated dark black oil shales shales and mudstones that become lighter in color and have oil yield and values that mudstones that become lighter in color and have Fischer assay (FA) oil yield and total organic carbon (TOC) values that decrease from base from to top
The sequence stratigraphy and geochemical data obtained during this study indicate that the indicate that the N2 and N3 layers were deposited under high lake level conditions and are
Summary
The future of domestic oil supplies in China is currently uncertain as a result of a lack of discovery of high-quality oil reserves and difficulties in maintaining stable hydrocarbon production despite the fact that China has vast oil shale resources [1]. China has focused on the Songliao Basin of Jilin Province, where United Strength Power Holdings Ltd. undertook a pilot test of the in situ conversion processing and chemical distillation of oil shales in this basin. This study focuses on the distribution of these oil shales within the sequence stratigraphic framework of the basin, the mineralogy of the oil shales, and the organic geochemical characteristics of the OM within these units, all of which are key for successful ICP [4,5,6,7,8]. This study focuses on the sequence stratigraphy, mineralogical and geochemical characteristics of the first member of the Qingshankou Formation in the Songliao Basin, and it uses the resulting data to identify suitable oil shale layers for future oil production by ICP
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