Hydrocarbon accumulation model of the Cretaceous in southern China

The Cretaceous in southern China is mainly a set of red and mauve clastic rock,with evaporation layers. For lack of source rock,it has been paid little attention to in the exploration process. With the development of research on hydrocarbon exploration,the masses of Cretaceous reservoirs and shows have been found in recent years. This means that the Cretaceous has great exploration potential. According to the research,authors find that the high-quality reservoir and efficient cap rocks develop in the Cretaceous. At the same time,the Cretaceous and underlying Paleozoic-Early Mesozoic marine strata and overlying Cenozoic nonmarine strata constitute a superimposed basin. Moreover,high-quality source rocks developed in the above-mentioned two sets of strata. In the south,especially in the middle and lower Yangtze region since the Himalayan strong rift was associated with a large number of faults,These faults connect the Cretaceous reservoir and its overlying and underlying source rocks,forming the fault-based and unconformity-based discontinuous source-reservoir-cap accumulation assemblages. Because the Cretaceous has the abundant oil and gas from Paleogene source rocks or Mesozoic–Paleozoic source rocks with secondary hydrocarbon generation ability,three types of reservoirs develop in the Cretaceous:new-generating and old-reservoiring reservoirs,old-generating andnew-reservoiring reservoirs,and few self-generating andself-reservoiring reservoirs. The hydrocarbon enrichment depends on two key factors. Firstly,Cretaceous reservoirs are near to the source kitchens,so its oil and gas source is ample. Secondly,the fault system is well developed,which provides the necessary conducting systems for hydrocarbon accumulation.