September 2011
Special Focus
Designing a seabed geochemical study
Surface geochemistry is a relatively routine exploration method used to investigate issues of hydrocarbon generation and charge.1–6 The presence of near-surface migrated petroleum provides strong evidence that an active petroleum system is present as well as critical information on petroleum source, maturity and migration pathways.6–8 This article summarizes results from the multiphase Surface Geochemistry Calibration (SGC) study conducted by the Energy and Geoscience Institute (EGI) at the University of Utah.
