• The search for new sources of petroleum constitutes

exploration.
• The sources discovered by successful exploration becomes
reserves, which are those portion of the total resource that
have been shown to be accessible and recoverable under
current economic and technologic conditions.
• Because no recovery technique can extract all oil or gas from
a field, the reserves of the field are only some fraction of the
in-place oil or gas which the field actually contains.
• The process of recovering reserves by drilling a well within a
field and operating them successfully, is called development
well.
• Organizations and individuals seeking or producing oil or gas
are called operators.
Anticlinal theory

• Geological contribution in oil finding was based on the

anticlinal theory.
• Oil and gas accumulate as high in the reservoir. Because they
are lighter than water, this is their position of least potential
energy. This elementary principle was put forward at the very
beginning of the petroleum era, in 1861, and it quickly
became the basis for exploration as the anticlinal theory.
• An anticline is simply a geometric arrangement of strata such
that they dip away from a central area which is relatively
“high”.
• It is certain that a majority of known oil and gas fields are in
“anticlinal” traps.
• Closure is the height to the crest of the structure above the
lowest structural contour which closes.
• It is the effective depth of the structure that can contain oil
or/and gas above the spill point (figure).
Contour of spill point in an anticlinal closure
SEDIMENTARY BASIN
• Sedimentary basin is an area of the earth’s crust that is
covered by thick sequence of sedimentary rocks.
• Hydrocarbons commonly occur in sedimentary basins and are
absent from intervening areas of igneous and metamorphic
rocks.
• The occurrence of hydrocarbons only in the sedimentary
basins justifies organic theory for the origin of hydrocarbons.
• Therefore detail knowledge of source rock, reservoir rock
and cap rock; and of traps need to achieve through
sedimentary basin analysis.
• Various types of basins around the world bear relationship
between genesis, evolution and hydrocarbon potential.
• Many basins are filled with continental and shallow marine
sediments but totally lack deep-sea deposits.
• Similarly many basins are differentiated by syn-depositional
and post-depositional basins.
Differences between syn-depositional and post-depositional sedimentary
basins.
• Distinction between syn-depositional and post-depositional
basins is critically important in petroleum exploration
because of the need for traps to have formed before
hydrocarbon generation and migration.
• Stratigraphic traps are generally formed before migration,
except for rare diagenetic traps.
• Structural traps may predate or postdate migration.
Genesis of Sedimentary Basins
• Cross-sections illustrating the basic concepts of plate
tectonics, showing how basins can form in response to crustal
movement driven by convection cells in the mantle.
All the rift zones are associated with crustal subsidence (grabens) bounded
by normal faults.
• I: An axis of sea floor spreading develops beneath the
continental crust. Up-doming occurs and a rift valley (D) is
formed. The East African rifts are a modern example.
• II: Crustal separation causes the rift to split into two
continental margin basins (C) separated by a widening ocean.
• III: Concomitant with the formation of new oceanic crust at
the spreading ridge, crust dives down the mantle at
subduction zones (A). In these areas deep basins undergo
extensive tectonism as their sediments are compressed by the
converging plates. Intracratonic sag basins develop
intermittently on areas of continental crust (B).
• The most important basinal features characterize the
convergent setting are: trench, trench-slope basin, fore-arc
basin, intra-arc basin, back-arc basin, remnant ocean basin,
peripheral foreland basin.
• Three mechanisms for basins formation are summarized in
figure.