Tezislər / Theses

 
References
1. Olsen and Briedis, "Sedimentological analysis and reservoir characterizarion of oil field," 
[Online]. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264817217301162. 
2. Shalaby, Sapri and Islam, "Integrated Reservoir characterization," [Online]. Available: 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13202-020-01005-0 . 
3. Thomas, "Reservoir characterization of a shallow marine sandstone," [Online].
Available: https://pg.lyellcollection.org/content/4/3/215 . 
 

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THE 3
rd
 INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES OF STUDENTS AND YOUNG RESEARCHERS 
dedicated to the 99
th
anniversary of the National Leader of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev
8
VITRINITE REFLECTANCE ANALYSIS AND ITS APPLICATION 
TO BURIAL HISTORY OF BASINS 
Zarifa Jabrailova 
Baku Higher Oil School 
Baku, Azerbaijan 
[e-mail] 
Supervisor: Associate Professor Rauf Nadirov 
Keywords:
organic maturity, paleogeothermal gradient, tectonic history, organic 
metamorphism 
%Ro refers to the reflectance of vitrinite maceral and is used to measure 
the degree of organic maturity. Low-rank coals that contain aromatic structures 
represent those vitrinite maceral groups, and as coal rank increases, a 
significant rise in increase in the aromaticity and condensation is observed, 
implying that, higher temperatures cause vitrinite macerals to generate 
gaseous hydrocarbons. [1] Vitrinite composition of the rocks changes 
significantly during the heating processes that take place over geological 
burial periods, thus, vitrinite reflectance is regarded as a valid method to 
evaluate thermal maturity of coal sample, thus it is a reliable measurement 
of an energy source. Both thermal and tectonic history of sedimentary basins 
are generally preserved by degree of organic metamorphism of carbonaceous 
matter, in other words, vitrinite reflectance in carbonaceous elements of 
sediments. Models have been developed to relate vitrinite reflectance to 
geothermal gradient as a function of temperature and time; for vitrinite 
reflectance values greater than 0.3% and sedimentary basins showing a 
constant geothermal gradient over the tectonic history, a relationship 
between the logarithm of vitrinite reflectance and depth can be plotted, which 
a gives a linear curve, the slope of which is used to find the geothermal 
gradient (°C/km). [2] 
For the wells, where maximum temperature is reached at the ultimate 
depth, Ro versus depth relationship can be divided into 3 segments, 1) with 
the first, uppermost segment where a linear gradient varies between 0.2 %Ro 
to 0.6-0.7 %Ro from the surface to a certain depth, 2) the second segment 
in the middle with %Ro values up to 1, 3) the lowermost segment where 
increases in reflectance are sharper than the first segment, despite the 
gradient being linear.
With a decrease in geothermal gradient, the depth to the inflection rises 
systematically, and this enables to plot a diagram demonstrating depth, 
reflectance and geothermal gradient, and then using it to identify maximum 
burial depth, together with paleogeothermal gradients with a potential 
presence of erosion in the wells (either at surface or unconformity). It is 

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