The mass balance study for the generated, migrated and accumulated petroleum constitutes an important tool for quantification of the petroleum systems providing indication for the comprehension of the oil distribution in a studied basin, whether it is a very explored province or a frontier area. This thesis has established a methodology for a mass balance construction in a petroleum system on a real case study. It is not only interested on the quantification of its charges and losses, but equally in its compositional aspects. The known hydrocarbon accumulation were used as a criteria for calibration of the mass balance parameters. It was chosen the Reconcavo basin, located at the Northeastern part of Brazil to this study. The basin is an aborted rift created during the fragmentation of the Gondwana supercontinent, during Lower Cretaceous. The quite known stage of exploration of the Reconcavo basin has contributed to the reduction of uncertainties concerning charges and losses, important issues to the definition of mass balance. The large number of parameters that influence the mass balance were then calibrated on a precise way. For its acquisition it was used a geochemical protocol involving the kinetic-compositional description of the Tauá and Gomo Members (Candeias Formation), the main source rocks of the basin. A restoration law of Total Organic Carbon (TOC) was obtained through the results of the thermogravimetric experiments and also by Rock-Eval analysis. A second part of this work integrated these geochemical results in a sequential scheme of petroleum system modelings (1D, 2D and 3D). A thermal history calibration apart from the maturation data was used to obtain the source term. Later on, generation, expulsion and migration were modeled. These results provided the elements of mass balance for the Reconcavo basin showing that 8% of the expelled oil from the source rocks was accumulated, 16% was lost at the porous framework of the non-reservoir rocks and 76% left the system laterally or through exsudation, during its geological evolution.
