How much have we learned about petroleum geology since 1967?

June 9, 2010 10:30 PM

What's new (in the last 40 years) in petroleum geology?

My polymathic tendencies compelled me to buy a textbook of petroleum geology on a recent outing to Powell's Technical Books. This book was published in 1967. I selected it mainly because it was cheap ($12.50).

I figured "How much could petroleum geology have changed since then?" They must have had the basics pretty well figured out by then. I'm already about a quarter of the way into the book and am really enjoying it. If I push on and finish it and never read a recent text, what will I miss or what will I have wrong?

posted by neuron to Science & Nature (2 answers total)

I'm only peripherally exposed to the field, but my sense is that computer simulations of reservoirs are used extensively, to the point that it has become a computationally intensive field. Numerical approaches to flow through porous media are used extensively... There are also very sophisticated statistical models based on production history, and all sorts of approaches to integrating these with geological data.

A bunch of new production techniques have also emerged over the past 30 years or so, mostly involving injecting material into reservoirs to push out the oil. My understanding (again, from a tangential exposure) is that the primary materials used for this are steam and water with dissolved surfactants. Design of these approaches is an ongoing research subject; in particular, surfactant chemistry for oil production is still being optimized.

I would assume that the level of sophistication has increased immensely since 1967. Two reasons: 1. Computers. 2. A shitload of money going into research. Seriously ridiculous amounts of money.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:06 PM on June 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Plate tectonics was not fully accepted until the late 60's, so depending on how up-to-date your book is, this may not be fully taken into account. I presume a knowledge of plate tectonics would affect the interpretation of oil exploration data along continental boundaries.

Also, as mr_roboto highlights, the improvements in computation power have massively increased the data volumes that can be acquired and processed (I wouldn't be surprised if the data volumes to have increased in line with Moore's law, if not faster). This will no doubt have radically changed the way reservoirs are interpreted (particularly now that 4D monitoring of reservoirs is possible).

In addition, I imagine the recent interest in carbon sequestration has required the development of a more detailed understanding of the movement and storage of gases underground.
posted by oclipa at 1:39 AM on June 10, 2010