Identification of hydrovolcanism and its significance for hydrocarbon reservoir assessment: A review

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.

Review of Explosive Hydrovolcanism

“…There are two major groups of non-explosive hydrovolcanism that we suggest be distinguished; one where the magma and water or water-saturated sediment interaction failed to produce fully developed MFCI processes and the other, explosive expansion, where frozen MFCI produces mixed rocks called peperite [44,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86]. Another major non-explosive hydrovolcanism type is hyaloclastite formation.…”

Quaternary Intrusions from the Zhongjiannan Basin, South China Sea: Their Relationship with the Hainan Mantle Plume and Influence on Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

“…It is widely known that magmatic activity plays a key role at continental rift-margins (Wright et al, 2012) and hydrocarbon exploration (Jackson et al, 2017;Xian et al, 2018;Kroeger et al, 2022), magmatic intrusion contributing significantly to the upper crust magma transport network. In recent years, the understanding of the magmatic plumbing system within sedimentary basins has been revolutionised by the study of seismic reflection data sets.…”

“…A petroleum exploration history of more than 120 years related to volcanic rocks worldwide reveals that the prediction of high-quality reservoirs is the key to successful exploration (Zou et al, 2008;Xian et al, 2018). Shallow igneous intrusions such as sills can produce traps through forced folding or overburden or through differential compaction (Gao et al, 2017;Magee et al, 2017).…”

A combined geophysical and lithological study on eruptive history and Quaternary lacustrine stratigraphy of a maar in Leizhou Peninsula, China

“…In addition, craters' diameter to depth ratios reportedly increase with age due to widening and reduction in heights by erosion (e.g., Gençalioğlu-Kuşcu et al 2007) and/or vent migration during eruption (e.g., Jordan et al 2013). These processes are complex, but the morphological characteristics of maar craters and the eruption products are keys to indicating the volcanic process and associated eruption environments (Graettinger 2018;Xian et al 2018).…”