SUBSIDENCE AND

THERMAL HISTORY
Introduction to subsidence analysis
• Improvements in the dating of stratigraphic units and in
estimates of past depositional water depths, largely
brought about by advances in micropaleontology, have
allowed the development of quantitative techniques in
geological analysis of sedimentary basins.
• The quantitative approach in geological analysis is termed
burial or subsidence analysis.
• Subsidence analysis aims at producing a curve for the
tectonic subsidence and sediment accumulation rates
through time.
• In order to do this, three corrections to the present stratigraphic
thicknesses need to be carried out:
a) Decompaction: present-day stratigraphic thicknesses must be
corrected to account for the progressive loss of porosity with
depth of burial.
b) Paleobathymetry: the water depth at the time of deposition
determines its position relative to a datum (such as present-day
sea level).
c) Absolute sea-level fluctuations: changes in the paleo-sea level
relative to today’s also needs to be considered
• Having made these corrections, comparisons between boreholes or
other sections are readily made possible.
• The time-depth history of any sediment layer can be evaluated,
therefore, if the three corrections above can be applied
• The technique whereby the effects of the sediment load are
removed from the total subsidence to obtain the tectonic
contribution is called backstripping
• Backstripped subsidence curves are useful in investigating the basin-
forming mechanisms
• Burial history and thermal history can be used to determine the oil
and gas potential of a basin and to estimate reservoir porosities and
permeabilities
• Burial history curves from a number of locations can also be used to
construct paleostructure maps at specific time slices
• Combined with information on thermal maturity, this can be a
powerful tool in evaluating the timing of oil migration and likely
migration pathways in relation to the development of suitable traps
Compressibility and compaction of porous sediments
(porosity loss during basin subsidence)
• Sediments turn into sedimentary rocks by a process of
consolidation, which involves compaction of the solid framework
and the occlusion of pore space
• A layer of fine-grained sediment will compact considerably,
even under its own weight, or with relatively small overburdens.
• Progressive burial of sediment by overlying layers during basin
evolution causes a number of physical and chemical changes to
the basin-fill
• Compressibility refers to the elastic response of a solid material
allowing a reduction of volume caused by an increase in pressure or
stress. A decrease in volume implies an increase in bulk density in
the sample or stratigraphic unit.
• Consolidation is a term usually applied to soils and young sediments
and refers to the decrease in volume by a loss of water under
static loading, which results in an increase in strength.
• Compaction is the change in dimensions of a volume of sediment by
a reduction of the pore space between a solid framework as a result
of loading
• Porosity loss refers to the loss of pore volume that commonly
accompanies burial, and may or may not be related to volumetric
strains. For example, cementation of a sandstone may result in a
loss of porosity but may not affect the volume occupied by the
sedimentary rock, and therefore involves no strain.
Compaction and porosity loss are affected by three sets of
interrelated processes;
1) Mechanical compaction, which is the mechanical rearrangement and
compression of grains in response to loading. Mechanical
compaction dominates in the cool upper portions of sedimentary
basins.
2) Physico-chemical compaction due to processes such as pressure
solution, which is particularly important in carbonates.
Cementation, which involves the filling of pore space by chemical
precipitation, which is related to temperature rather than to
loading.
3) Chemical compaction becomes increasingly important in the warm
lower portions of sedimentary basins, the cement arresting
further mechanical compaction.
• For a given lithology, observations show that there is a general
exponential reduction in porosity and increase in bulk density with
depth
• The total volume of a sedimentary rock is made of a solid volume
and pore volume.
• During burial the total volumetric strain is therefore made of a
change in pore volume and a change in volume of the solid phase.
• Compaction causes a major reduction in the pore fluid volume
accompanied by a small reduction of the solid volume due
to compression, whereas cementation increases the solid volume at
the expense of the pore fluid volume.
• Changes in the solid volume during mineral transformation and
cementation are commonplace
• For example, the transformation of aragonite to calcite
causes an increase in 8% by volume
• But the dehydration of gypsum to anhydrite causes a
reduction of 37.5% in volume,
• And dehydration reactions in shales such as the illitisation
of K-feldspar and kaolinite causes a volume decrease of
9.6%.
• This means that the common starting point to the study of
the loss of porosity during burial, the assumption that the
solid volume remains constant (since the compressibilities
of many rock-forming minerals are small)
Effective stress
• General relationships for the burial of sedimentary layers can be
obtained using basic principles of soil mechanics
• For a water-saturated clay, for example, the overlying weight on a
layer of sediment is supported jointly by the fluid pressure in the
pores and the grain-to-grain mechanical strength of the clay
aggregates. The effective stress is the combination of the vertical
stress and the fluid pressure:

Effective stress σ′ = vertical compressive stress σ - fluid pre ssure p

• This well-known relationship is known as Terzaghi’s law

• As the amount of gravitational compaction increases, the
effective stress also increases. Since the vertical compressive
stress σ is determined by the weight of the overlying water-
saturated sediment column

(where ρb is average water-saturated bulk density, g is

acceleration due to gravity, and y is depth)
• this increasing vertical load must be divided between p and σ.
• If the ratio of fluid pressure to overburden pressure p/σ = λ, it
must vary between zero where the fluid pressure is non-
existent, to 1 where the sediment layer is effectively ‘floating’
on the highly pressured pore-filling fluid. We can therefore
write
• As the sediment load is increased, the extra vertical stress is taken
up initially by an increase in pore fluid pressure so that both p and
λ increase.
• With time, however, water is expelled from the pores, reducing fluid
pressures but increasing effective stresses. The increase in σ′
results in compaction of the grains supporting the stresses, reducing
porosity. The lowest pressure that the pore fluid can attain is that
due to the hydrostatic column, that is
• If λ > ρw/ρb , the pore fluids are at a higher pressure than
hydrostatic.
• Assuming that water is free to be expelled from the sediment pore
space and is not trapped, increasing burial should lead to the
equilibrium state where p is hydrostatic.
• If this is the case,then

• which states that the magnitude of the stress causing compaction is

a function of depth and the difference between the water-
saturated sediment and water densities.
• Sedimentary layers are capable of compacting under the
action of gravity on their mass
• The gravitational compaction of fine-grained sediments is
particularly important in delta regions where suspended
sediment accumulates rapidly
Porosity and permeability of sediments and sedimentary 
rocks
• Sediments and sedimentary rocks are composed of solid framework
particles and pore space occupied by pore fluid and pore-filling
minerals that have grown since the time of deposition
• The pore space controls the total amount of fluid stored in a
sediment or sedimentary rock, and the size and arrangement of the
pores controls the ability of the rock to transmit fluids by a slow
permeable flow
• The volume fraction of void space in a porous medium is the
porosity ϕ
• The volume of void space relative to the solid volume of a sample is
the void ratio e
The two are related by;

• If porosity is 0.5, the void space is the same as the solid

volume, so e = 1
• Pores may be connected with each other, allowing flow, or they may be
unconnected
• The term effective porosity is used to describe the porosity of connected
pores
• Permeability is the ability of a substance to allow another substance to pass
through it, especially the ability of a porous rock, sediment, or soil to
transmit fluid through pores and cracks
• Geologic permeability is usually measured in millidarcies
The flux of fluid (volume per cross-sectional area per time) vD flowing
through a porous medium of length l in response to a pressure difference Δp
is the well-known Darcy’s law

where k is the permeability and μ is the fluid viscosity.

Typical permeabilities of sediments and rocks.
Measurements of porosity in the subsurface
• Porosity can be directly measured on core and sidewall cores
recovered from a borehole, but such direct measurements tend to
be concentrated on zones of known economic interest, such as
reservoir intervals
• The distribution of porosity with depth in a borehole must
therefore be obtained by remote methods, principally from the
interpretation of downhole electrical logs
• For example, sonic, neutron and density logs are sensitive to
lithology and porosity
• Of all the porosity tools, the sonic log is most widely used
• This is largely because the neutron and density logs are normally
only run in the deeper zones of hydrocarbon interest in a
borehole, and the sonic log may therefore be the only porosity
log available in the shallow sections of the borehole
• Porosity from the sonic log can be determined if the lithology is
known
Porosity-depth relationships
• Direct measurements on core material and remote measurements
from downhole logging devices such as the sonic log provide an
enormous database on the relation between present depth and
porosity

Compilation of porosity-depth curves for sandstones (a), shales (b) and carbonates (c).
Note that shales compact early compared to sandstones. The porosity-depth relation for
carbonates varies according to grain types and amount of cementation.
A number of factors affect the porosity-depth relationship, chief
of which are:
a) gross lithology, shales compacting quickly compared to
sandstones
b) depositional facies, which controls grain size, sorting and clay
content and therefore initial (surface) porosity
c) composition of framework grains: for example, pure quartz
arenites differ from lithic arenites containing ductile
fragments
d) temperature strongly affects chemical diagenesis, such as
quartz cementation, clay mineral growth and pressure solution
e) time: porosity loss may require sufficiently long periods of
time.
• The simplest trend recognized between porosity and depth is a
linear trend of the form;

where ϕ and ϕ0 are the porosity at depth and the initial porosity
respectively, y and a is an empirically derived coefficient
• This linear relationship appears to fit data carefully chosen
from specific sedimentary facies within a certain stratigraphic
unit of given geological age from one basin
• However, a linear relationship self evidently cannot apply at
large depths, since porosities would have to become negative
• A more widely used porosity-depth relation therefore has the
form of a negative exponential, which produces an asymptotic
low porosity with increasing depth.
• For normal pressured sediments, the variation of porosity with
depth can be expressed as

where c is a coefficient determining the slope of the ϕ-depth

curve, y is the depth, and ϕ0 is the porosity at the surface
Schematic diagram illustrating the use
of the porosity-depth coefficient c. If a
porosity-depth curve is known and it
is exponential, c can be found by
determining the depth at which the
porosity ϕ has decreased to 1/e of its
surface value ϕ0. This should be
repeated for all lithologies.
• Porosity-depth curves in large databases are based on a
statistical analysis of large numbers of samples derived from
normally pressured as well as overpressured lithologies that
have been subjected to differing amounts of cementation and
from different geothermal gradients