GEOCHEMICAL APPROACH TO HYDROCARBON PROSPECT Russian patent published in 1997 - IPC

FIELD: hydrocarbon deposit prospect. SUBSTANCE: invention aims at searching hydrocarbon deposits directly from surface without resort to mine opening and drilling boreholes. To this aim, a small group of mobile forms of elements indicative of hydrocarbon in question are extracted from soil, namely those elements bound with soil organics as well as elements in electromobile forms from humus level of soil A1 and elements bound with iron-manganese compounds from soil level C enriched with that kind of compounds. Areas are further selected combining lots with abnormally high concentrations of all selected element-indicators contained in all extracts and, from position of these areas, frontiers of oil and gas-bearing provinces, regions, and fields or individual deposits are established depending on testing scale. EFFECT: facilitated hydrocarbon prospect. 2 dwg