PYROLYSIS OF ASPHALTENES AS A TOOL FOR RESERVOIR GEOCHEMISTRY

Light hydrocarbon fingerprinting has become a widely used approach for the identification of compositional variations in an oil field. Howev er, in some instances, these light hydrocarbons can be missing or suff iciently altered by sampling procedures, for them to be reliable for s uch a purpose. In this note, we propose a method based on the pyrolysi s of asphaltenes and subsequent fingerprinting of released light hydro carbons with direct applications to reservoir geochemistry.