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Reservoir Drive Mechanisms

Competency Statement:

Identify and interpret production mechanisms to predict the behavior of oil, gas and gas condensate reservoirs.

Learning Objective:

Upon completing this Learning Module assignment, the participant should be able to
  • identify primary reservoir drive mechanisms (solution gas drive, water drive, gas cap drive) by observing production and pressure trends.
  • estimate original hydrocarbons in place, using both volumetric and material balance methods, and develop a range of estimates for technical recovery factors and reserves.

Assignment Instruction:

The ultimate goal of reservoir management is to optimize economically the development and production of hydrocarbons. This requires answers to three questions:
  (1) How much hydrocarbon is there?
  (2) How much of it is recoverable?
  (3) How fast can it be recovered?

In other words, we need to determine , respectively, the oil and gas in place, the reserves, and the production rate.

Your job in this assignment scenario is to review the reservoir data that have been collected to this point and

  • estimate the original hydrocarbon in place using volumetric and material balance methods,
  • qualitatively evaluate the reservoir drive mechanisms, and
  • estimate the reservoir’s primary recovery factor