Abstract
Petroleum obtained from reservoir rocks and bitumen extracted from fine-grained rocks have many similarities, but they also exhibit many important differences. There is no doubt that they are related; indeed, bitumen is almost universally accepted as the direct precursor for petroleum. However, many unanswered questions remain about the processes that transform bitumen into petroleum. Major compositional changes occur in going from bitumen to petroleum, but we are not certain whether they occur mainly within the source rock or during migration through the reservoir rock. We also do not know how much of the change involves chemical reactions, and how much is due to physical separation of chemical compounds having very different properties. The influence of the lithologies of source and reservoir rocks on these compositional changes is poorly understood.
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© 1985 International Human Resources Development Corporation
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Waples, D.W. (1985). Bitumen, Petroleum, and Natural Gas. In: Geochemistry in Petroleum Exploration. Geological Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5436-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5436-6_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8900-5
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