Virgin rock temperatures are important to hydrocarbon exploration, as these temperatures are necessary for the computation of source rock temperatures, and for hydrocarbon generation computations. Several methods have been developed for determination of virgin rock temperatures from maximum temperatures recorded during logging in the past decades. This paper describes an investigation where the calculated virgin rock temperatures from several different methods were examined for bias and accuracy using 18 different measurement series at the Oseberg field. The temperatures were corrected for different depths of burial, and then compared with each other and with drill stem test (DST) measurements to investigate the inaccuracy of the methods. The most advanced methods gave values close to the DST temperatures on average, but with standard deviations as high as 9° C. The less advanced models (like the Horner plot method) have systematically too low virgin rock temperatures (by about 8° C) for the Oseberg field, with standard deviations of 8° C. The errors in calculated virgin rock temperatures are large enough to completely alter predictions of hydrocarbon generation in an area. The large errors are attributed to poor quality data and to physical effects that are not properly taken into account in the temperature calculations. Improved sampling of temperature data can probably reduce the errors to some extent.
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