f The Application of Petroleum Bearing Fluid Inclusions to Tracking Petroleum Evolution in the Subsurface

Fluid inclusions are tiny pockets of fluid trapped within minerals (Goldstein and Reynolds, 1994). Fluid inclusions hosted within diagenetic phases of reservoir rocks and carrier beds contain samples of palaeopetroleum and palaeowater and can yield valuable and otherwise unobtainable information about the evolution of petroleum composition through time, the timing of petroleum emplacement, reservoir filling history and palaeo-compartmentalisation. It may also be possible to determine the temperature and pressure at which the included petroleum was trapped, with implications for the assessment of pressure regimes in the geological past.