Pyrolysis of asphaltenes as a tool for reservoir geochemistry

Light hydrocarbon fingerprinting has become a widely used approach for the identification of compositional variations in an oil field. However, in some instances, these light hydrocarbons can be missing or sufficiently altered by sampling procedures, for them to be reliable for such a purpose. In this note, we propose a method based on the pyrolysis of asphaltenes and subsequent fingerprinting of released light hydrocarbons with direct applications to reservoir geochemistry.