Majid Alipour - Assistant Professor, Department of Geology, Faculty of Earth Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran
Bahram Alizadeh - Professor, Petroleum Geology and Geochemistry Research Center (PGGRC), SCU, Ahvaz, Iran
Scott Ramos - Professor, Infometrix, Inc. ۱۱۸۰۷ North Creek Parkway South, Suite B-۱۱۱, Bothell, WA ۹۸۰۱۱
Behzad Khani - Ph.D., Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), Tehran, Iran

Chemometric methods can enhance geochemical interpretations, especially when working with large datasets. With this aim, exploratory hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) methods are used herein to study the bulk pyrolysis parameters of 534 samples from the Persian Gulf basin. These methods are powerful techniques for identifying the patterns of variations in multivariate datasets and reducing their dimensionality. By adopting a divide-and-conquer approach, the existing dataset could be separated into sample groupings at family and subfamily levels. The geochemical characteristics of each category were defined based on loadings and scores plots. This procedure greatly assisted the identification of key source rock levels in the stratigraphic column of the study area and highlighted the future research needs for source rock analysis in the Persian Gulf basin.

Chemometric Classification, Source Rock Geochemistry, Rock-Eval Pyrolysis Data, HCA, PCA