Identification of Hydrovolcanism and Its Significance for Hydrocarbon
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Xian et al. Journal of Palaeogeography (2018) 7:11 https://doi.org/10.1186/s42501-018-0010-6 Journal of Palaeogeography REVIEW Open Access Identification of hydrovolcanism and its significance for hydrocarbon reservoir assessment: A review Ben-Zhong Xian1,2*, Yan-Xin He1, Hua-Peng Niu1,2, Jun-Hui Wang1,2, Jian-Ping Liu1 and Zhen Wang1 Abstract Investigations of modern volcanic eruptions have demonstrated that ancient volcanic eruptions widely involved water, which was thus named as hydrovolcanic eruptions. Hydrovolcanisms are distinctive in many aspects, such as dynamics, eruptive pattern, texture and structure of rock, and vesicularity. First, normal sediments covered directly by volcanic rocks are the indicators of eruption environments. In addition, microfeatures, special structures, lithofacies or facies associations, and geochemical index of volcanic rocks can also provide significant evidences. Moreover, perlitic texture, quenching fragmentation, surface feature, cementation type, vesicularity, and pillow structure, parallel bedding, large-scale low-angle cross-bedding, antidune cross-bedding of pyroclast are keys to indicating hydrovolcanisms. Clearly, these marks are not equally reliable for identifying eruption environments, and most of them are effective and convincible in limited applications only. For explosive eruptions, the most dependable identification marks include quenching textures, vesicularity in pyroclasts and special large-scale cross-bedding. However, for effusive eruptions, useful indicators mainly include pillow structure, peperite and facies associations. Condensation rate of magma, exsolution of volatile affected by eruptive settings and magma−water interaction, and quenching in hydrovolcanisms have an influence on formation and scale of primary pores, fractures and their evolution during diagenetic stage. Therefore, this review provides systematic identification marks for ancient hydrovolcanisms, and promotes understanding of the influence of eruptive environments on hydrocarbon reservoirs of volcanic rocks in oil−gas bearing sedimentary basins. Keywords: Hydrovolcanism, Volcanic reservoir, Eruption environment, Hydrocarbon reservoir, Oil−gas bearing sedimentary basin 1 Introduction the Earth account for 85% of the global volcanic Hydrovolcanism is the term that describes the inter- eruptions, approximately 3.485 km3/yr. and well above action between meteoric or connate water and lava, subaerial eruptions (White et al. 2003), which demon- magmatic heat, or gases at or near the Earth’s surface, strate that hydrovolcanisms widely exist in volcanic and it encompasses the physical and chemical dynamics eruptions. However, due to the difficulty of field mon- that determine the resulting intrusive or extrusive behav- itoring and the high cost of submarine sampling, ior and the character of eruptive products and deposits current research degree of eruption process and pet- (Valentine and Fisher 1999;Wohletzetal.2013). rological characteristics of hydrovolcanisms is still lower Hydrovolcanisms contain subaqueous eruptions and (Carey 2000; White et al. 2003). subaerial eruptions involved with water. The statistical The water involved in a hydrovolcanism can come results indicate that subaqueous volcanic eruptions on from ground water, connate water, marine, fluvial or la- custrine water, glacier and rain water (Wohletz et al. 2013). Research on the round crater lake of Quaternary * Correspondence: [email protected] “ ” 1College of Geosciences, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing volcanic field in Eifel, western Germany (named maar 102249, China at the time) sets the work on hydrovolcanism (phreato- 2State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China magmatic eruption) since 1983 (Fisher et al. 1983). University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Xian et al. Journal of Palaeogeography (2018) 7:11 Page 2 of 17 People come to realize that the involvement of water, systematically summarize the identification marks of which is completely different with air in physical proper- hydrovolcanism and discuss their limits and reliability ties, changes the dynamic condition and eruption style based on depositional environment and volcanic eruption of volcanic eruptions, as well as the process of disper- products, in order to provide identification marks for an- sion, transportation and sedimentation of eruption prod- cient volcanic eruptions, increase the understanding of ucts (Cas and Giordano 2014; Dziak et al. 2015), and hydrocarbon reservoirs of hydrovolcanisms, and offer new leads to the specificity in such factors as grain size distri- ideas for volcanic reservoir evaluation. bution, fragmentation, rock texture, sedimentary struc- ture and vesicle abundance (Sun and Fan 2005). 2 Identification marks of hydrovolcanism In addition to a large number of submarine volcanic There are subaerial eruption and subaqueous eruption eruptions, the case studies on eruptions that occurred as types of volcanic eruption according to their different under lacustrine, for example, indicated by phenomenon geographical environments. The eruption environment, and data from Karymskoye Lake in Russian (Belousov however, is not exactly equivalent to the depositional en- and Belousova 2001), famous Taupo Volcano in New vironment. Products of subaerial eruption can deposit Zealand (Manville et al. 2009), Sirinia Basin in Southwest on land as well as under water; similarly, the products of Romanian−Eastern Europe (Seghedi 2011) and Tocomar subaqueous eruption can also deposit both on land and Volcano in Argentina (Petrinovic and Colombo Piñol under water. The hydrovolcanism discussed here empha- 2006), etc. have demonstrated the occurrence of hydrovol- sizes the volcanic eruption which has high interaction canisms in lakes (Stix 1991; White et al. 2003; White et al. with the water, and is approximately the same as phre- 2015). Lava and pyroclastic rocks have been found gener- atomagmatic eruption, including subaqueous eruption ally developed along with hydrovolcanism when investi- and subaerial eruption involved with water. gating the Paleogene of the Jianghan Basin (Run et al. The identification marks of the subaqueous volcanic 1996), the Yingcheng Formation of the Songliao Basin eruption will be described in detail in terms of the char- (Zhang et al. 2007), the Carboniferous of the Santanghu acteristics of the eruptive products (Section 3) and the Basin (Wang et al. 2010) and the Carboniferous of the associated depositional environment records (Section 4) Junggar Basin (Yu et al. 2004). The physical properties of of the volcanic rocks. water in density, viscosity (rheology), heat capacity, ther- mal conductivity and phase state are significantly corre- 3 Characteristics of the eruptive products lated with the peculiarity of hydrovolcanism. For instance, Eruptive process is influenced by magma composition, magma−water interaction will lead to water vaporization, explosive degree, transportation and deposition. Such quenching and vapor explosion, fragmentation, etc., and characteristics as the microtextures, special structures, then lead to differences in eruption process and volcanic lithofacies or facies sequences and oxidation index of productfeatures(Whiteetal.2003), further affecting the eruptive products (volcanic rocks) can reflect these pro- characteristics of pores or fractures and the quality of res- cesses. In turn, these characteristics of the volcanic rocks ervoirs in the hydrovolcanism. can be used to infer the type and process of eruption, Petroleum exploration history of more than 120 years and further identify the eruption environment (Table 1). with volcanic rocks in the world reveals that consider- able petroliferous sedimentary basins contain volcanic 3.1 Microtextures facies of different sizes (Zou et al. 2008). The prospect- Microtextures of eruptive products provide a wealth of ing of the 11 Chinese basins, such as Bohai Bay Basin, information for researching physical and chemical prop- Songliao Basin (Wang et al. 2003a, 2003b), Junggar erties of magma, and features of eruptive processes and Basin (Kuang et al. 2008) and Santanghu Basin (Zhao subsequent diagenesis. The following five microtextures et al. 2006), demonstrated that the prediction of high- are discussed for identifying hydrovolcanism (Table 1). quality volcanic reservoirs is the key to successful explo- rations (Wang et al. 2003a, 2003b; Zou et al. 2008;Xian 3.1.1 Perlitic texture et al. 2013). Recent investigations demonstrated that the Perlite is a kind of acidic lava commonly developed when performance of reservoir was controlled by diagenesis acidic lava has interacted with water, the moisture content (including epigenetic weathering), volcanism and tec- of which is 2%−6%. Perlitic texture, an arc-shaped fissure tonic activity (Chen et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2003a, texture looking like pearl, which is a typical texture of 2003b; Dong et al. 2012), as well as volcanic eruption perlite, indicates that it may be formed in a violent environment (Xian et al. 2013). To date, effective identi- quenching