Applications during appraisal and production

During the appraisal stages of exploration, reservoir geochemistry becomes far more important. Comparison of oils (and gases) from separate reservoirs or fields often lead to groupings that are either source related (i.e. potentially different petroleum systems) or maturity related.

For any given petroleum system, variations in maturity can be used to infer migration pathways which in turn can greatly help our understanding of the filling history for the study area.

During production and the latter stages of appraisal, the resolution of the correlation increases.