Definition
Petroleum geochemistry is the science and application of chemical concepts to understand the origin of petroleum – natural gas, condensate, and crude oil – and its occurrence and fate on the earth’s surface and within its crust (adapted from Hunt 1996).
Introduction
The most extensive development of petroleum geochemistry has been in an industrial sense, because petroleum geochemical principles are applied widely in exploring for, developing, and producing petroleum. Petroleum geochemical concepts are also applied in such diverse areas as environmental studies, forensic applications, archeological and anthropological studies, and the search for present and past evidence of extraterrestrial life.
This article focuses on the use of petroleum geochemistry in understanding the source , maturation , migration, and alteration of petroleum in the earth’s upper crust, where petroleum is considered to encompass a molecular continuum from natural gas...
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Curiale, J.A. (2017). Petroleum Geochemistry. In: Sorkhabi, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Petroleum Geoscience. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_2-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02330-4_2-1
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