Just Like A Bottle Of Pop

In the early days of oil exploration, and drilling, more oil was left in the ground than was ever taken out! In the majority of oil fields, the active force working to bring the oil to the surface is gas. Where this force is great, gushers are brought in. This gas is usually found in solution within the oil, contained within the fluid in much the same manner as carbon dioxide is contained in a bottle of pop. Shake up a bottle of pop and flip off the cap, and you have a gusher. But if you allow the bottle to stand for some time without re-corking, the pop grows stale and listless. The same principle is involved in an oil well. Although you cannot shake it up like a bottle, the forces of Nature, having put the oil there and added the gas, have provided the gusher qualities. If the gas is dissipated, the mobility of the oil decreases, and the crude cannot flow into the casing and tubing of the well.

In the old days the greedy oilman simply touched a match to the natural gas that accompanies the oil, and it burned merrily in large gas flares, illuminating the entire countryside. Today, however, almost every state has conservation laws that prohibit waste of this gas, and require its utilisation as fuel, or its return to the oil sand for the maintenance of pressure within the reservoir.

For each oil reservoir there is a rate beyond which production cannot be sustained without waste of the natural reservoir energy and loss in ultimate oil recovery. This is called, in the oil business, the "maximum efficient rate." It is more often glibly spoken of as "the mer". During World War II it was necessary to produce crude oil from wells in California, Texas. Louisiana and Arkansas above the mer. There was no other choice because of the desperate need for petroleum. The North American continent has proven oil reserves in excess of 20 billion barrels.

The term "proven reserves" is somewhat nebulous and misleading to the layman. Experts decide that a pool contains so much "recoverable" or obtainable petroleum, if properly produced, and the figure is accordingly entered in the records. Therefore, if the oil men of the United States do not try to get all of t b e petroleum out of the ground as rapidly as possible, there are assumed to be at least 20 billion barrels to draw upon. After World War I Americans were alarmed because they thought they had only 8 billion barrels of proven reserves. But, during the following few years, the figure was boosted to 20 billion, and there it stood until World War II.

By: davidbunch

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