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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. SUMARY The deposits are, more often like piles of sand or porous rock that have been saturated with oil. Oil does not really flow 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. 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. 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. Oil is indeed black gold; every drop of it is precious in today's world. 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.