Advances in Earth Science ›› 2001, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (5): 710-718. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2001.05.0710

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SOME PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF PETROLEUM GEOLOGY

DAI Jinxing   

  1. Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, Beijing 100083,China
  • Received:2001-06-20 Revised:2001-07-12 Online:2001-10-01 Published:2001-10-01

DAI Jinxing. SOME PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF PETROLEUM GEOLOGY[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2001, 16(5): 710-718.

The 20th century showed the substitution of the high pollution and solid energy fuels by the low pollution and fluid ones. At the end of the 20th century gaseous fuel begin to be dominant. In the whole 20th century, 115 trillion tons of oil and 64 billion cubic meter of natural gas were recovered. The recover of such a large amount of petroleum owes much to the foundation of new theories of petroleum geology and their application on petroleum exploration. The theory of petroleum generation from marine strata was established in the 1870s, developed and improved in the whole 20th century and played an important role in petroleum exploration and development. Chinese scholars established the theory of petroleum generation from terrestrial strata in the 1920s, which brought about great progress of petroleum industry in China. Despite once regarded as an oil-poor country, China produced 160 million tons of oil in 1999, the production ranks the fifth in the world. The theory of hydrocarbon generation from coal formed in 1940s, indicating the distributive area of humic source rock as a probable target as well as that of sapropelic source rock. This theory brought about the rapid progress of natural gas industry. About 75% of the natural gas proved in Russia, whose natural gas production is the largest in the world, is coal-formed gas. Coal-formed gas also played an important role in the rapid increase of natural gas reserve in the recent years. By the end of 2000, about 64% of total gas reservoir gas is coalformed gas. There are 4 gas fields which reserve exceeds 100 trillion cubic meter respectively, their source rock are all of humic type. The development of the theory of natural gas generation from coal promoted the formation of the theory of oil from coal, however, the general rule of hydrocarbon generation of coal measure is that gas instead of oil is the dominant.Gas hydrate is a kind of abnormal natural gas. Its resources is about 2.0×1016 -2.1×1016 cubic meter by common estimatation, its carbon amount is twice about that of the total proved fossil fuel. Gas hydrate is regarded as a potential energy in the 21th century. Nevertheless, the lots of problems in its accumulating conditions, developmental methods and environmental effects retard its recover.

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