Abstract
Recently, the study of organic geochemistry has developed rapidly modern techniques for petroleum exploration. The modern geochemical techniques provide reliable information on the recognition of a petroleum source rock. The source rock quality is defined by the concentration of organic matter, both soluble (bitumen) and insoluble (kerogen) ones, type and thermal maturity of kerogen, and the composition of the solvent extractable hydrocarbons and nonhydrocarbons.
Geochemic a l correlation between petroleum and source rocks, which is based upon recognition of compositional similarities, is also an important problem for geochemical exploration. Recent studies on biological markers as “fingerprint” in oils, bitumen and kerogen pyrolyzate show that they are useful parameters in crude oil-source rock and oil-oil correlation.
In this paper, their importance and usefulness are mainly reviewed.
