oa Evolving Insights from Diamondoids in a Global Hydrocarbon Fluid Dataset

Diamondoids are caged hydrocarbons that are present in virtually all petroleum fluids. As such, they can be employed in geochemistry studies across the full hydrocarbon field lifecycle, from exploration to abandonment. Recent advances in diamondoids research include the development of the Adamantane Index (AI), a new fluid maturity parameter that was calibrated using naturally occurring petroleum fluids derived from a collection of marine Type II source rocks ( Van der Ploeg et al., 2023 ). Here we expand on that work by presenting a richer fluid dataset (n = ∼500) from global petroleum systems, which allows us to rigorously evaluate various geological controls on diamondoid distributions including the AI parameter. Furthermore, our new dataset allows us to validate the performance of the AI fluid maturity model (AI-VRE) in basins outside of the original calibration and with non-marine source rocks (including Type I and Type III). Our global diamondoids dataset shows that there is considerable information to be unlocked from petroleum systems worldwide through consistent data compilation and integration, especially in terms of absolute diamondoid abundances and how those relate to source rock type and depositional environment.