Reservoir engineering questions

1. What is difference between OIIP/Resource and Reserves?

2. What are different types of flow geometries? (Radial, Linear, hemispherical and spherical) What is the type of
flow geometry in case of channel reservoirs?(Radial around well bore and linear as we go away from well bore)
3. What is difference between Brown field and Green field?
4. What are basic types of depositional environments? (Fluvial, Marine, Transitional, Deltaic)
5. When you call field as “Matured Field”?
6. Draw relative permeability curve for oil-wet reservoir?
7. What is difference between Free water level (FWL) and OWC? Are they same or different?
8. What is the favorable mobility ratio for waterflooding? (M>>>1)
9. If the porosity of two reservoirs are 5% and 20%, which one would have larger transition zone height and Why?
(low porosity reservoir, 5%)
10. If a same reservoir, first case having a gas and second case having oil. Would both have same height of transition
zone or not? Why or why not?
11. When should we start EOR in the life of the field?
12. If the Swc (irreducible water saturation) is 20%, what is the movable oil saturation? (less than 80%)
13. For 2 phase reservoir, If relative permeability of water is 0.4 at particular saturation what will be relative
permeability of oil at same saturation? (“Kro+Krw” never equals to 1) Further, what is the difference between
relative permeability and effective permeability of a phase??
14. According to API classification of reserves what does 1P, 2P and 3P signifies? What does P1, P2 and P3 stands
for?
15. If porosity of a conventional reservoir is 8% what would be the approximate value of its perm 1000 mD, 100md,
10mD or 0.1mD?
16. What is the work of reservoir engineer? What are the task it performs?
17. What are the things you can determine from well test analysis? (Permeability, Skin, Initial Pressure, Presence of
Flow boundary i.e. fracture, channel, closed boundary or parallel sealing faults)
18. What do you mean by miscibility? What is First-Contact Miscibility (FCM) and Multi-Contact Miscibility (MCM)?
19. Which drive mechanism would give maximum recovery for gas reservoir and why? (depletion)
20. Why it is recommended to produce oil from reservoir at pressure just below the bubble point pressure?
21. What are different types of traps? (Structural, Stratigraphic, Hydrodynamic)
22. What are the basic components required for hydrocarbon reservoir? (Source Rock, Reservoir Rock, Cap Rock-
Seal)
23. What are the different methods used to determine permeability? (PTA, Core Analysis)
24. 5000 Bbls of oil occupies 4000 Bbl at surface and yields 20,000 SCF of gas. What is Bo and Rs?
25. If Sp Gr of Oil is 1.0 , what will be its value in API?
26. What is mobility ratio? What do you mean by favourable mobility ratio?
27. What happens when unfavourable mobility ratio exists between displacing and displaced phase?
28. Is Recovery factor dependent on mobility ratio? How can we alter unfavourable mobility ratio to favourable?
29. What is Amott Harvey Wettability Index? How will the performance of an oil wet reservoir reflect?
30. What is IOR and EOR?
31. What are the means to reduce ROS to waterflood?
32. Classify the petroleum reservoir systems based on the P-T diagram.
33. What is the difference between absolute and effective porosity?
34. What are the factors which plays important role during the primary production?
35. What is retrograde condensation? What can be done to stop the loss due to retrograde condensation process in
the reservoir?
36. At what pressure the viscosity of oil is minimum and why?
37. If Solution Gas (Rs) or Formation volume Factor (FVF) curve of typical oil is provided then how will you identify
the saturation pressure from the data. In an under-saturated reservoir initial reservoir pressure should be more
or less than Saturation/Bubble point pressure?
38. Why solution gas is constant above Saturation/Bubble point pressure?
39. What is the difference between oil Formation Volume Factor and Shrinkage factor?
40. When pressure is lowered, why does oil Formation Volume Factor increases till bubble point and subsequently
decreases?
41. What are the secondary recovery mechanisms and which kind of fluids are injected? What is the difference
between secondary & tertiary recovery methods?
42. In which kind of reservoir, retrograde condensation takes place?
43. Why Gas Deviation Factor (GDF) is used in reservoir engineering calculations? What is the range of GDF and what
is the value of GDF for ideal gases?
44. What is saturation/bubble point pressure (Pb)?
45. What will be the producing GOR behavior in an under saturated oil reservoir when reservoir pressure goes below
Bubble Point pressure? And why ? What is the basic use of oil and gas FVF? What is application of two-phase oil
FVF ?

Porosity and Permeability Concepts

1. What is the difference between absolute porosity and effective porosity?

2. What are the factors controlling porosity? (Depth, lithology,grain size distribution)
3. What is the porosity for cubicle packing of uniform spheres. Which arrangement of uniform spheres has the most
compact packing? (Ans. 47.6 %, Rhombohedral packing : 25.96 %)
4. What is the difference between primary porosity and secondary porosity?
5. Which kind of grain size distribution is likely to have more porosity, well sorted uniform size or poorly sorted?
6. What is the difference between rock compressibility and pore compressibility?
7. Define Darcy’s law. What is 1 Darcy permeability?
8. What is the average permeability of beds in series and beds in parallel?
9. What all factors can affect permeability measurements in laboratory?
10. What is Klinkenberg effect? How can liquid permeability be estimated from air permeability?

Capillary pressure, Wettability and Relative permeability

1. What is the difference between imbibition and drainage process?

2. What all factors govern the shape of capillary pressure curve? (Ans. Size and distribution of pore throats, fluids and
solids involved and history of saturation process)
3. What are the different commonly used methods for measuring capillary pressure in laboratory? (Ans. Desaturation
or displacement process, Centrifuge method, Dynamic capillary pressure method and mercury injection method)
4. What is Leverette’s ‘J’ function and what is it used for?
5. What are the different types of wettability that reservoir rocks have?
6. What is the difference between absolute permeability, effective permeability and relative permeability?
7. Draw and explain different elements of oil-water or gas-oil relative permeability?
8. What is relative permeability hysteresis?
9. What are factors affecting the shape of relative permeability curve? (Ans. Pore size distribution, wettability and
saturation history)
10. What are the different methods of measuring relative permeability in laboratory? (Ans. 1. Steady state flow process
2. Unsteady state process 3 capillary pressure method)

Fundamentals of behaviour of hydrocarbon fluids

11. Draw and explain the phase diagram of a multi-component hydrocarbon system.
12. What is retrograde condensation?
13. What is the difference between a wet gas and a retrograde gas condensate reservoir?
14. What are disadvantages of producing gas condensate field on depletion? How can these loses be minimised?
15. What is the difference between a high shrinkage and a low shrinkage oil reservoir? Draw the phase envelope to
illustrate the difference?
16. What is gas deviation factor or Z-factor of natural gases?
17. What are pseudo-critical and pseudo-reduced properties for mixtures of natural gases?
18. What are the different methods of obtaining representative reservoir fluid sample?
19. When is re-combination sampling preferred?
20. What are different PVT studies carried out for normal black oil system?
21. What other PVT studies are done for gas-condensate systems?
22. Why is multi-stage separation done?
23. What is the difference between flash liberation and differential liberation process?
24. What is formation volume factor. Show its relationship with pressure?
25. How does viscosity of undersaturated oil changes with pressure?
26. What are different uses of PVT data in reservoir engineering studies?
27. In absence of laboratory data how can the properties of oil and gas be estimated? What all basic data is required for
PVT correlations?
28. In FVF and pressure relationship, when pressure decreases from initial, the FVF increases upto bubble point and then
subsequently declines with pressure. Why?

Reservoir drive mechanism, MBE and displacement processes

1. What are the different drive mechanisms?

2. Which drive mechanism is most efficient and which is least efficient?
3. What all information can be derived from MB calculations? What basic data is required for MBE?
4. What are drive indices?
5. How can GIIP be estimated graphically from pressure data of a volumetric dry gas reservoir?
6. How can you establish whether a gas field is having aquifer support or not by P/Z vs Gp plot for dry gas reservoir.
7. What are the typical characteristics of solution gas drive reservoir? Why does produced GOR trend initially
decreases, increases subsequently and again declines?
8. What are the typical characteristics of water drive reservoir?
9. Which kind of reservoirs are rate sensitive? Is depletion type reservoir rate sensitive ?
10. What is a fractional flow curve ?
11. What is mobility ratio? How does it affect breakthrough ?
12. What is the shape of fw vs Sw curve for less than unity mobility ratio displacement process? How does shape of
fractional flow curve changes with mobility ratio?
13. Why recovery of gas is less in a water drive reservoir than in a depletion drive reservoir?

Enhanced Oil Recovery

1. What is EOR? What are the different types of EOR methods being used?
2. What are the basic screening criterions for identifying appropriate EOR techniques?
3. What is the difference between enhanced oil recovery process and artificial lift method?
4. What is the difference between a miscible displacement and immiscible displacement?
5. What is the role of polymer flooding in reservoirs? What advantages it offers over waterflooding?
6. What is the purpose of Surfactant EOR processes?
7. What is viscous fingering? How can it be minimised?
8. What is the difference between a cyclic steam process (huff-n-puff) and steam flooding?
9. What is the concept that works behind Polymer flooding process?
10. What is the concept that works behind Thermal processes?
11. What is the concept that works behind Surfactant flooding?
12. Name the fields and EOR methods under application in ONGC?