| Knowledge of the temperature and cementation histories of sedimentary basins is important in appraising their liquid hydrocarbon potential. Understanding the thermal history permits assessment of whether source rocks have experienced conditions appropriate for petroleum formation. The mobility of hydrocarbons and their storage capacity in sandstone reservoirs are directly related to porosity changes during diagenesis. Recent advances in ;Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 1 at Elk Hills, California, located 25 miles southwest of Bakersfield, California in the southern San Joaquin basin, provides a suitable environment to assess the feasibility of determining thermal and cementation histories. Well 934-29R, the deepest in California, was drilled to a depth of 7.45 km to test the potential for hydrocarbons below the upper Miocene Stevens sandstone.;Detrital K-feldspars sampled from arkosic sandstone cores at depths of 6.61 to 4.12 km yielded thermal histories via the ;The ultimate goal of this research is to test the Woods-Boles hypothesis: that paleotemperatures can be calculated from measured oxygen isotope ratios of carbonate cements. Advances in ion microprobe techniques allow us to perform in situ analysis of stable isotopes at the ;Rigorous application of statistical techniques for data analysis is required for an unbiased interpretation of geochemical results. Geochemistry, however, has a relatively weak tradition in utilizing these data analysis techniques, which can lead to a dramatic misinterpretation of results. The second part of this thesis documents several of these fundamental errors, and describes the application of several statistical techniques to geochemical data reduction. |
