Department 250 – Department of applied geochemistry and testing laboratory

The work of Division 250, the Applied Geochemistry and Testing Laboratories, is concerned with projects and contracts involving exploration and evaluation of deposits of crude oil and natural gas. It also undertakes work on environmental problems, mainly pollution of soils and aquatic systems, identifying the contaminants and their pathways. Projects and contracts are undertaken both in the Czech Republic and abroad.

The key facilities of the section are the Organic Geochemistry Testing Laboratories(Zkušební laboratoře organické geochemie), which is a laboratory of the Czech Geological Survey in which analyses of crude oil, gas, light hydrocarbons, and organic matter in rocks, stream sediments and soils are carried out.

The results produced by the laboratory are used in the evaluation of ecological hazards, in geological exploration for oil and gas and regulating their extraction, and to provide geochemical information in support of general geological mapping. For environmentally oriented projects analyses of selected organic compounds indicative of specific types of pollution are carried out (e.g. PAU, PCB). For oil and gas exploration, analytical procedures are used to determine hydrocarbon source potential, the thermal maturity of source rocks, and the molecular fossils used for correlating crude oils with their source rocks. To evaluate hermeticity of underground gas reservoirs and monitor the uncontrolled ascent of coal bed methane, the chemical and isotopic composition of methane, higher hydrocarbons, and carbon dioxide are measured. For purposes of general geological mapping and basin analysis, molecular indicators are used to distinguish lacustrine and marine facies.

In addition to the laboratory procedures described above, the section has the use of instruments for measuring surface gases and the geochemistry of volatile substances in the field.