Geochemistry of Fossil Fuels

From Conventional to Unconventional Hydrocarbon Systems. Understanding the origin and fate of hydrocarbons in the subsurface has been the major endeavor of organic geochemists during the second half of the XXth century. They succeeded to the point where the deciphered interplaying set of elements and processes paved the way to the revolutionary concept of petroleum system, a unifying paradigm which plays an important role in decision making associated with oil and gas exploration. The chemistry and physics involved have been addressed in a quantitative way and integrated to the other aspects of petroleum geology, giving rise to the development of numerical basin modeling.