UNIT FOUR RECOVERING THE OIL

Special Terms

Oil Reservoir: Sand or porous rock saturated with oil. This is always a more accurate
description of most petroleum deposits than oil pool.

Drive: Natural pressure which forces oil to the surface.

Dissolved-gas Drive: Pressure from gas dissolved in oil. The dissolved gas expands and forces
the oil to move.

Gas-cap Drive: Pressure from a large amount of gas above the oil. The gas expands and forces
the oil to move.

Water Drive: Pressure from water beloo the oil that forces the oil to move.

Christmas Tree: A system of valves to control the rate of low at the surface of a particular well.

Secondary Recovery: Reworking an oil field to recover oil that previously could not be brought
to the surface.

Proved Reserves: The amount of oil already discovered that will be recovered by known
technology.

Ultimate Resources: The amount of oil believed to be in the ground based on estimates by oil
geologists. Both proved reserves and ultimate resources are measured in barrels of oil.

RECOVERING THE OIL

We have used the term oil pools to refer to deposits of petroleum as though there were
underground lakes of oil. A more accurate term, however, is one that is often used in the
petroleum industry: oil reservcirs.

The deposits are, in other words, more often like plles of sand or porous rock that have been
saturated with oil. Oil does not really Bow rapidly through sand or rock, of course; it must be
forced to move. There are three kinds of natural drives, as the forces that cause the oil to
move are called. Each drive involves the gas and water that are almost always found with oil,
as we have previously observed. First is the dissolved-gas drive.

Dissolved gas is mixed with the oil. As it expands, it exerts a pressure which pushes the oil
through rock or sand. Recovery is low when this type of drive is encoun- tered. Second is the
gas-cap drive. Gas has not only dissolved in the oil; a large amount of it has formed above the
oil. As the gas expands, it forces the oil to move through the rock or sand. Recovery is generally
somewhat higher with this kind of drive. Third is the water drive, in which there is a large
amount of water below the oil.

Pressure forces the water upward into the oil-bearing rock or sand and moves the oil ahead of
it. It generally recovers more oil than the other two drives. If reservoir pressure is not high
enough for the oil and water that fow into the well to be pushed all the way to the surface,
then pumping is necessary.

This is more expensive than when natural drives are present, since power for the pumping
must be supplied. In the early days of the oil industry, new wells often came in as gushers. In
these wells great underground pressure forced the oil upward without any control, and it was
necessary to wait until the pressure dropped enough for the oil to flow at a normal rate before
any of it could be recovered. Of course, a great deal of oil was wasted when a well gushed in
this way.

Today, great care is taken to prevent gushers. They are indeed quite rare, thanks to the use of
modern technology. The petroleum industry today is very concerned about acquiring the
greatest possible amount of oil from each deposit without unnecessary waste.

The steps for the recovery of the oil begin as soon as a new well is spudded in. Geologists
study the indications for the presence of the oil itself. Later, petroleum engineers try to predict
the kind of drive that will be present. With the aid of computers, they can determine how a
deposit will behave under the effects of the different techniques that can be used to make the
oil flow to the surface.

At the head of most wells is a device that is called a Christmas tree. This is really a system of
valves that controls the amount of oil which is allowed to flow to the surface. The Christmas
tree directs the oil into the stora ge tanks, where it is kept until it is shipped to its next
destination.

After a well has been brought in, the derrick is usually pulled down, only to be put up at the
spot where another well is to be drilled. The valves of the Christmas tree and the pipes leading
from it will probably be the only sign left that there is a producing oil well in the neighborhood.

This is quite different from many of the older pictures of oil fields, with derricks crowded
together, often only a few feet apart.

In fact, in a modern field the wells are usually spaced quite tar apart, since it is more profitable
to recover the same amount of oil with fewer wells. As more oil is removed from the field, the
pressure of the original drive gradually decreases. Sometimes the natural pressure drops to a
point where no more oil can be recovered from the deposit. Nowadays, various methods in
addition to pumplng are used to keep these deposits producing if there is an indication that
more oil can be recovered.

One technique is to pump water into the ol-bearing formation, pushing or displacing the oil
ahead of it toward the production wells. This system restores water dríve. Another technique
that will restore natural pressure to the formation is to pump gas back into the oil- bearing
layer.

Wells occasionally become blocked by pieces of asphalt, wax, or other solid material. In this
case, the obstruction can be dissolved by pumping an acid into the well. Another technique
involves pumping water and sand into the well under high pressure.

All of these te:hniques have enormously increased the amount of oil that can be recovered. In
the early days of the industry, as much as 75 percent of the oil had to be left in the ground.
With more modern methods, the figure has been reduced to 50 percent or even less. Many
felds that had been abandoned have been brought back into produc- tion. When a field is
reworked in this way, it is called secondary recovery.

In addition to secondary recovery, the increased technical ability of modern oilmen has led to
the discovery of deposits at levels under- neath existing fields. It is now possible to bring in
producing wells more than 20,000 feet below the surface of the earth! The constantly rising
demand for oil and the world's increasing dependence on oil as an energy source have made
efficient recovery more and more important.

The economic forces are the same as those that have led to deeper drilling and greater
exploration for under- water oil deposits. Oil is indeed black gold; every drop of it is precious in
today's world. More efficient recovery techniques have led to an increase in the proved
reserves of petroleum, although they continue to dwindle when expressed in terms of annual
consumption.

Proved reserves refers to the amount of oil in the ground that will be recovered by known
technology. Ultimate resources refers to the amount of oil that has been discovered. The
estimates of proved reserves and ultimate resources are usually given in barrels of oil.
Together, they represent an educated guess as to the amount of oil still present beneath the
surface of the earth.