Chapter 1 - Heavy Oil

01--01 - Introduction and Definitions on Crude Oil (5 min.) Sample Lesson
01-02 - Heavy Oil Classification (11 min.)
01-03 - Mechanisms Of Formation Of Heavy Oil (16 min.) Quiz: 01-03 - Mechanisms Of Formation Of Heavy Oil

Chapter 2 - Methods For Characterizing Heavy Oil

02-01 - Sample Collection and Physical Property Measurements (31 min.)
02-02 - Geochemical Analysis Of Heavy Oils (16 min.)
02-03 - Quality Assurance / Quality Control - Validating Geochemical Data (22 min.) Quiz: 02-03 - Quality Assurance / Quality Control - Validating Geochemical Data

Chapter 3 - Biodegradation and the Origin of Heavy Oil

03-01 - Introduction To Biodegradation (20 min.)
03-02 - Biodegradation and its Impact on Physical and Chemical Properties (19 min.)
03-03 - Geochemical Biodegradation Schemes (18 min.)
03-04 - Controls On Biodegradation - Regional Versus Local, Charge Mixing (26 min.) Quiz: 03-04 - Controls On Biodegradation - Regional Versus Local, Charge Mixing

Chapter 4 - Reservoir Geochemical Applications

04-01 - Baffles versus Barriers on Fluid Communication (21 min.)
04-02 - Production Allocation (26 min.)
04-03 - Physical Property Prediction & Summary (21 min.) Quiz: 04-03 - Physical Property Prediction & Summary

Heavy Oil Geochemistry and Applications / Chapter 1 - Heavy Oil

Lesson 01--01 - Introduction and Definitions on Crude Oil

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Transcript

01. Lesson 1.01: Introduction and Definitions on Crude Oil 02. Introducing your Instructor 03. Course Objectives 04. Course Outline 05. Course Outline (2)

01. Lesson 1.01: Introduction and Definitions on Crude Oil

Hello, I'm Dr. Barry Bennett. And today I'm going to go through Heavy Oil Geochemistry and Applications.

02. Introducing your Instructor

So currently I work for APT UK, and I've been there since 2022. Originally, my track record is from studying geology at Aston University in Birmingham and then on to do the Master's in organic petrography and organic geochemistry at Newcastle upon Tyne, following with a PhD in organic geochemistry at Bristol University working on the origin of porphyrins. I then started my working career as a postdoc at Newcastle University for 13 years, and most of these projects were based on applied research which was sponsored mainly by oil companies. Then following Newcastle, I migrated to Calgary in 2004 to join the University of Calgary and work on geochemistry, and continued on until a company was spun out of the University of Calgary called Gushor. I'm not really working with Gushor in Canada, but this was a company that would work and troubleshoot in heavy oil and bitumen issues. This company was acquired by Schlumberger in 2013, and I joined Schlumberger for about 10 years. After the lab in the northeast closed down, I migrated back to the UK.

03. Course Objectives

So the course objectives: I'm going to really talk about heavy oil geochemistry and applications from a geochemist perspective rather than engineering. And so there might be some differences when it comes to the tools and approaches, which, as I say, is a geochemist's pick on this discipline.
Firstly, I'm going to introduce the context and character of heavy oil accumulations; Provide understanding of theory, methods and applications of mechanisms of formation of heavy oil; Biodegradation and heavy oil occurrence; Applications of geochemistry to determine reservoir characteristics, including the issues surrounding barriers vs.baffles, production allocation and physical property prediction.
And from this, I hope you take home skills that you've gained, including understanding the causes and solutions impacting heavy oil physical property data; A sound knowledge in the geochemical basis of heavy oils; Ability to recognize biodegradation and processes in petroleum and assess degradation levels; and the ability how to exploit reservoir fluid composition heterogeneities for optimizing production.

04. Course Outline

So here's an outline of the course. Starting with the initial part, heavy oil: Introduction and definitions on crude oil; Heavy oil classification; And mechanisms of formation of heavy oil.
And then the second part, methods for characterizing heavy oil. This involves sample collection and storage to ultimately get the best data that you can get from the sample material; Physical property measurements, and these include how we see variations in physical property data and how we can certainly provide solutions to optimize data collection; Methods for extracting heavy oils from core; And then what do we mean by fresh? So fresh samples available at rig-side vs. long-term storage and how that impacts fluid properties; And then on to geochemical analysis of heavy oils; And ultimately a piece on the quality assurance / quality control to validate geochemical data.

05. Course Outline (2)

Part 3 will go into more detail in Biodegradation and the origin of Heavy Oil. So I'll introduce biodegradation and then look at the process of biodegradation and its impact on physical and chemical properties, and then investigate some of the geochemical biodegradation schemes which allow us to assess the level of biodegradation and likely fluid properties associated with these different degradation levels; Controls on biodegradation and those being regional vs. local, and then how they can be impacted by charge mixing. So paleo-biodegraded oils in a reservoir with later fresh charge mixing.
And finally, the applications and the tools that have been developed on the basis of understanding the controls on physical and chemical properties of crude oils. These include barriers vs.baffles on vertical fluid communication in reservoirs, production allocation, horizontal well placement (basically the wellbore trajectory) in long 1.5 km wells, time-lapse geochemistry, and physical property prediction.
And I'll finally summarize the heavy oil course.