This chapter deals with petroleum geology. Readers interested in further details are referred to Selley (1998), Gluyas and Swarbrick (2004), Tabak (2009) and Bjorlykke (2010). Those interested in further details of the environmental impact of petroleum geology are referred to Chapter 9.

In petroleum geology, the principal application of palaeontology is in the description and prediction of source-, reservoir- and cap-rock distributions, in time and in space, in a sequence stratigraphic framework, through the biostratigraphic age-dating and the palaeobiological, palaeoecological or palaeoenvironmental interpretation of samples acquired during field geological mapping and drilling; and thereby in the reduction of risk and of uncertainty, all along the value chain from regional exploration (see Section 5.2, below) to reservoir exploitation (see Section 5.3, below). It also has important applications in well-site operations (see Section 5.4, below).