Constraining reservoir residence time and timing of crude oil biodegradation in western Canada

能够确定地质事件的年代，如地球的年龄，一直是科学领域最重要的成就之一。该项目正在开发方法，通过对石油的分析，直接测量我们今天在特定储集层中发现的石油和天然气已经存在了多长时间。令人惊讶的是，这在目前是不可能的！能够确定石油在油层中的存留时间对于了解轻油向重油和油砂转化的时间尺度是非常重要的，也为我们提供了大量关于石油如何进入油层以及如何在加拿大的稠油油层中找到最优质的石油生产的信息。这将有助于提高加拿大重油地带的采收率和减少二氧化碳排放。 测年石油在储油层中的时间也使我们能够评估储油层的盖层对石油和天然气的泄漏程度，从而使我们能够评估一些储油层作为地下工业二氧化碳(二氧化碳封存)场所的有效性。如此深的二氧化碳储存是加拿大缓解二氧化碳排放和气候变化计划的重要组成部分(1/3)，能够判断盖层的有效性非常重要。该项目将培养几名学生和博士后科学家，并将进一步向世界展示加拿大大学的尖端、雄心勃勃的研究。

Being able to date geological events such as the age of the Earth has been one of the most significant acheivments of science. This project is developing methods for directly measuring, from analysis of the oil, how long the oil and gas we find today in a specific reservoir has been there. Surprisingly this is not possible at the moment! Being able to date how long oil has been in a reservoir is very important in understanding the timescales of alteration of light oils to heavy oils and oil sands and also gives us a lot of information on how the oils enter the reservoir and how to find the best quality oils to produce in Canada's heavy oil reservoirs. This will help increase recovery and reduce CO2 emissions in Canada's heavy oil belt. Dating the time oil has been in a reservoir also allows us to assess how leaky the caprock of the reservoir is to oil and gas and thus allows us to assess how effective some reservoirs would be as sites for industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) storage in the subsurface (carbon dioxide sequestration). Such deep CO2 storage is an important part (1/3) of Canada's plans for mitigating its CO2 emissions and climate change and being able to tell how effective caprocks are is very important. The project will train several students and postdoctoral scientists, and will further demonstrate to the world the cutting edge, ambitious research at Canadian universities.