Applied Petroleum Reservoir Engineering, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6. Undersaturated Oil Reservoirs

6.1 Introduction

At the beginning of this text, the various hydrocarbon reservoirs were subdivided into four types. This chapter contains a discussion on reservoirs that have only liquid phases initially present. The next chapter will consider oil reservoirs that have an initial gas cap. These two reservoir types differ significantly from the gas reservoirs. The differences stem from the composition of the reservoir fluids and result in a distinct primary production method—that of depletion drive. Compared to volumetric gas drive, depletion drive is a weaker primary production method and more factors, such as rock and water compressibility, must be considered in order to accurately predict the behavior ...