Polycyclic aromatic compounds in crude oil as proxies for Permian Tarim large igneous province activities

Abstract

Large igneous provinces (LIPs), a critical area in Earth science, are closely related to paleoenvironmental evolution and biodiversity. The Permian Tarim large igneous province (TLIP) provides an ideal laboratory for correlational research. Previous reports show that the TLIP formed ∼300–262 Ma. Based on igneous lithology and the upper limit of single magmatic activity (<5 Ma), the TLIP can be divided into five main magmatic episodes. Core logging, seismic sections, lithofacies observations, and in-situ calcite U-Pb dating indicate diabase intrusions and a hydrothermal upwelling event (∼295.9–273 Ma) resulted from TLIP magmatic activity. The results indicate that polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) in oil are powerful proxies of magmatic intrusion and hydrothermal activity in the Permian TLIP. The existing diabase intrusion (EDI) samples show a higher concentration of high-molecular-weight (HMW) PACs (≥5-ring PACs) and greater combustion-derived PAC ratios. The distribution coupling between the diabase intrusion and PACs indicates that the HMW PACs are mainly derived from the cycloaddition reactions by the pyrogenic source (i.e., diabase intrusion). The conversion of phenanthrene (Phe), biphenyl (Bp), and dibenzothiophene (DBT) series compounds indicates that the oil is altered by hydrothermal activity. The hydrogenium and sulfur carried by the hydrothermal upwelling process promote the heteroatom incorporation of PACs. The cycloaddition and heteroatom incorporation reactions of PACs during the formation of LIPs offer a new perspective for evaluating their impact. PACs serve as effective proxies for LIPs and may also contribute to biological crises associated with LIPs.

Keywords

Large igneous province / Igneous intrusions / Hydrothermal / U-Pb dating / Polycyclic aromatic compounds

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Rongzhen Qiao: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Conceptualization. Meijun Li: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision. Donglin Zhang: Software, Investigation, Data curation. Hong Xiao: Validation, Resources. Wenqiang Wang: Investigation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42173054). The author expresses gratitude to the Associate Editors, R. Damian Nance, and the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive reviews, which have significantly enhanced the manuscript.

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