RESERVOIR GEOCHEMISTRY - A LINK BETWEEN RESERVOIR GEOLOGY AND ENGINEERING

Geochemistry provides a natural, but poorly exploited, link between re servoir geology and engineering. We summarize some current application s of geochemistry to reservoir description and stress that, because of their strong interactions with mineral surfaces and water, nitrogen a nd oxygen compounds in petroleum may exert an important influence on t he pressure/volume/temperature (PVT) properties of petroleum, viscosit y and wettability. The distribution of these compounds in reservoirs i s heterogenous on a submeter scale and is partly controlled by variati ons in reservoir quality. The implied variations in petroleum properti es and wettability may account for some of the errors in reservoir sim ulations.