Abstract:

Although NSO-compounds occupy only a small portion of crude oil and/or rock extracts, they contain significant geological and geochemical information. The knowledge of NSO-compounds composition was limited by the compositional complexity and the limitations of separation technique. Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) coupled with electrospray ionization (ESI) is a recently developed powerful technique for charactering NSO-compounds especially those with high molecular weight in petroleum. ESI FT-ICR MS has been used for petroleum geology application based on its ultra high resolving power and mass accuracy. According to the investigations of the marine and terrestrial oil samples from the Tarim Basin and the Liaohe Western Depression, respectively, as well as other previous works, it has been showed that the FT-ICR MS technique is applicable in multiple geochemical aspects, such as source rock and relevant hydrocarbons determination, maturity level estimation, hydrocarbons migration tracing, and thermochemical sulfate reduction (TSR) identification and/or evaluation. FT-ICR MS is significant in both the compositional characterazation of the NSO-compounds and the application in petroleum exploration.

Key words: ESI FT-ICR MS, NSO-compounds, thermal maturity, source rock, TSR, hydrocarbons-migration tracing