The impact of severe biodegradation on the molecular and stable (C, H, N, S) isotopic compositions of oils in the Alberta Basin, Canada

Although the effects of biodegradation on the composition and physical properties of crude oil have been well studied, effects of in-reservoir petroleum biodegradation on molecular and isotopic compositions of crude oils are not yet clearly understood. The Alberta Basin, in western Canada, is one of the world’s largest petroleum accumulations and constitutes an ideal example of a natural suite of sequentially biodegraded oils. The basin hosts moderately to severely biodegraded petroleum, regionally distributed and in single, more or less continuous, oil columns. In this study, a series of oil samples from the Alberta heavy oil and oil sands provinces, with varying degrees of biodegradation, were analyzed to assess the impact of progressive biodegradation on the molecular and C, H, N, and S isotopic compositions of oils. The results of the molecular characterization of the hydrocarbon fraction of the studied oils show that the oils have suffered biodegradation levels from 2 to 10+ (toward the Alberta–Saskatchewan border) on the Peters and Moldowan scale of biodegradation (abbreviated PM 2 to PM 10) and from tens to hundreds on the Manco scale. Within single reservoirs, increasing biodegradation was observed from top to bottom of the oil columns at all sites studied. The whole oil stable isotopic compositions of the samples varied in the ranges δ13C = −31.2‰ to −29.0‰, δ2H = −147‰ to −133‰, δ15N = 0.3–4.7‰ and δ34S = 0.4–6.4‰. The maximum differences between δ values of samples (Δ) within single oil columns were Δ13C = 1.4‰, Δ2H = 7‰, Δ15N = 1.7‰ and Δ34S = 1.0‰. Regional variations in the isotopic compositions of oil samples from different wells (averaged values from top to bottom) were 1.2‰ for δ13C, 12‰ for δ2H, 4.1‰ for δ15N and 5.5‰ for δ34S and hence generally significantly larger variations were seen than variations observed within single oil columns, especially for N and S. It appears that even severe levels of biodegradation do not cause observable systematic variations in carbon, nitrogen or sulfur isotope composition of whole oils. This indicates that sulfur and nitrogen isotopic compositions may be used in very degraded oils as indicators for oil charge from different source rock facies.