Mn content of reservoir calcite cement: A novel inorganic geotracer of secondary petroleum migration in the tectonically complex Junggar Basin (NW China)

Electronic probe microanalysis (EPMA) results of reservoir calcite cement from fourteen core samples in the Junggar Basin show that Mn-content varies largely between different samples from below the detect limitation to 4.14%, while it displays a generally good correlation with oil-gas shows. This, therefore, likely indicates that concentration of the Mn-content of the calcite cement has a close relation to the intensity of petroleum fluid charging during hydrocarbon secondary migration. In order to assess this hypothesis, oxygen and strontium isotopic measurements on sixteen calcite veins host in source sequences were carried out to investigate the feature of the oil-source petroleum fluid. Analytical results imply that during hydrocarbon generation and migration, deep hot fluid has dissolved volcanic minerals interlined between mudstone source rocks. As Mn is a kind of typical trace element enriched in volcanic rocks, it is reasonable to conclude that the petroleum fluid formed in the source sequences would be Mn-rich. Consequently, calcite cements precipitated from such Mn-rich petroleum fluid would be Mn-rich accordingly. Due to the geologic chromatographic effect during migration along reservoir rocks, the decreasing of the Mn-content of the reservoir calcite cements indicates the migration direction. Then, this novel geotracer was further successfully applied in the study of hydrocarbon migration in the Junggar Basin in combination with organic geochemical analyses during the hydrocarbon migration. The Mn content of the reservoir calcite cement appears promising as a novel inorganic geotracer for the petroleum migration. This paper represents a search for novel indicators of secondary petroleum migration in tectonically complex basins based on fundamentals of the reservoir fluid-rock interactions.