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Testing reproducibility of vitrinite and solid bitumen reflectance measurements in North American unconventional source-rock reservoir petroleum systems

December 18, 2019

An interlaboratory study (ILS) was conducted to test reproducibility of vitrinite and solid bitumen reflectance measurements in six mudrock samples from United States unconventional source-rock reservoir petroleum systems. Samples selected from the Marcellus, Haynesville, Eagle Ford, Barnett, Bakken and Woodford are representative of resource plays currently under exploitation in North America. All samples are from marine depositional environments, are thermally mature (Tmax >445 °C) and have moderate to high organic matter content (2.9–11.6 wt% TOC). Their organic matter is dominated by solid bitumen, which contains intraparticle nano-porosity. Visual evaluation of organic nano-porosity (pore sizes 1.0 produced lowest R values, generally ≤0.5% (absolute reflectance), similar to a prior ILS for similar samples. Other traditional approaches to outlier removal (outside mean ± 1.5*interquartile range and outside F10 to F90 percentile range) also produced similar R values. Standard deviation values 

Publication Year 2020
Title Testing reproducibility of vitrinite and solid bitumen reflectance measurements in North American unconventional source-rock reservoir petroleum systems
DOI 10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2019.104172
Authors Paul Hackley, Carla V. Araujo, Angeles Borrego, Antonis Bouzinos, Brian Cardott, H. Carvajal-Ortiz, Martha Rocio Lopez Cely, Vongani Chabalala, Peter Crosdale, Thomas Demchuk, Cortland Eble, Deolinda Flores, Agnieszka Furmann, Thomas Gentzis, Paula Goncalves, Carsten Guvad, M. Hamor-Vido, Iwona Jelonek, M. Johnston, Tatiana Juliao-Lemus, Stavros Kalaitzidis, Wayne Knowles, Jolanta Kus, Zhongsheng Li, Gordon Macleod, Maria Mastalerz, Taissa Rego Menezes, Seare Ocubalidet, Richard Orban, Walter Pickel, Paddy Ranasinghe, Joana Ribeiro, Olga Gomez Rojas, Ricardo Ruiz-Monroy, Jaques Schmidt, Abbas Seyedolali, Georgios Siavalas, Isabel Suarez-Ruiz, Carlos Vargas, Brett Valentine, Nicola Wagner, Bree Wrolson, Julian Jaramillo Zapata
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Marine and Petroleum Geology
Index ID 70218766
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Eastern Energy Resources Science Center
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