Research paperA novel method to estimate mineral compositions of mudrocks: A case study for the Canadian unconventional petroleum systems

- Mineral in mudrocks can be estimated from major elements, TOC, and MinC.
- Results of the estimation method are consistent with those of XRD analysis.
- A high sample number will be beneficial to improve the statistical significance.

The mineral composition of mudrocks is an essential attribute in controlling the reservoir quality of unconventional petroleum systems. The present study introduces a semi-quantitative method to estimate mineral phases of mudrocks in various Canadian unconventional hydrocarbon systems using total elemental analysis (inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)) and Rock-Eval data (total organic carbon (TOC) and mineral carbon (MinC)).This method involves statistical analysis based on a sound knowledge of hydrocarbon source rock inorganic geochemistry. The workflow can be divided into four steps: (i) converting major elements (Si, Al, Fe, K, Na, Ca, Mg, Ti, and P) to their oxides, (ii) inferring modes of occurrence of elements using statistical analysis of geochemical data (major elements, TOC, and MinC), (iii) identifying the mineral types (oxide, aluminosilicates, carbonates, sulfide, and phosphate) according to elemental occurrences and calculating mineral phase concentrations, and (iv) verifying the results by comparing to XRD data on selected samples. The results, especially for brittle minerals such as quartz, carbonates (e.g. calcite, dolomite, and ankerite), and pyrite, show that the estimated mineral compositions correspond closely and consistently with measured mineralogy obtained from XRD. This method takes advantage of bulk geochemical data already available for hydrocarbon potential and chemostratigraphic studies, without devoting additional samples and cost for XRD analysis.