The Center will be headed by Deputy Director of the Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy Mikhail Buslov. The grant may amount to 90 million rubles in the next three years.
Dr. Buslov commented, "As you know, organic matter turns into petroleum under certain temperature conditions, namely, 60 to 160 C. It's the so called petroleum window. If rocks have been heated to above or below this window, it's useless to search for petroleum there. And now we can restore temperature regimes which a certain sedimentary basin was in several dozen million years ago. This approach is very effective and economical for companies. Think about it - you can spend dozens of millions of rubles on many wells or drill just one and determine exactly whether or not there is petroleum there. It seems unbelievable, but yet it's real, and we will be doing just that."
Combining geochronology and thermochronology has become very popular in the world, especially in Australia. Russia has but a few geochronology labs and not a single one in thermochronology. It's safe to assume the new KFU center will be the leader.
###