Permeability Super Highway Primer, page-8

Its all about GEOLOGICAL RATE OF CHANGE over time Tri.

"oil would have in fact flowed away"

You are thinking too much about a literal FLOWING system.

This is NOT how the Basin Petroleum System works.

The migrational flow of oil is based more on a very gradual UP-DIP transference of the oil via permeability gradient pressure difference over millennia and that is partially caused by the different over-pressure within the pores from the gas hydrocarbon component as you travel up-dip.

As long as there are top and bottom seals, and they can be as simple as a change in permeability and pore density which leads to a gradient pressure seal, then you effectively have a reservoir. So you can end up with BOTH a reservoir and a migrational path for the oil up the stratigraphic slope because of this extremely slow migrational rate.

You really need to think about this as a whole ACTIVE SYSTEM that works exteremly slowly just like plate tectonics.

All these geologic systems move very slowly, BUT they do move, and that is the whole basis of why we eventually see conventional trapping at the end of the migrational route of the source oil.
These can also be hugely effected by lithological changes over time as well with folding, faulting and other orogenic changes as well as the continual stratigraphic depositional changes from silt layering that eventually create the turbidite fans of the North Slope and have ended up giving the diagenetic changes that have resulted in the hydrocarbons we now see at Icewine purely due to the massive burial depths.

The Hydrocarbons ARE PRESENT AS YOU CAN SEE IN THIS ANNMNT.

Or is this just beer without a head

http://clients2.weblink.com.au/news/pdf_1\01710487.pdf



"It is not a technical term and the context in which I have heard it used is a completely different geological to that of the HRZ shale."


So in what context did you see it used in Tri ?

The company hasn't actually anncd anything yet in terms of how it applies to the Icewine permeability data and this data has been taken over the oil bearing Brookian sequence strata as well as the sub HRZ Kuparuk zone.

It may well be that they don't consider the HRZ as a primary Super Highway, it may well apply to the Kuparuk (interesting that there are now high production wells in the Kuparuk oil pool) and the Brookian zones. HOWEVER as you can see the KUPARUK reservoir is named as such because it has its source of oil from the Kuparuk stratigraphic sequence below the HRZ.

What is also fact is that the oil within the reservoirs to the north have been shown to have genetic links with all these zones within Icewine AS WELL AS THE HRZ !!!

So its a distinct possibility that the HRZ is A PART of this Super Highway. In fact when one thinks about this term one thinks of lanes of a highway, and if this is the case then its highly likely that each of these strata are acting effectively as a lane within the Super Highway system.

But we'll just have to wait and see what the annmnt says and to which zones it is referring.

Thanks for clarifying this concept by initiating deeper thinking on this concept Tri !!!



d.