Oil Well Drainage

Abstract

PETROLEUM technologists, especially on the production side, will be familiar with the author's “Analytical Principles of the Production of Oil, Gas and Water from Wells”, published in 1928 —a severely mathematical treatise of a complex subject. Reviewing that volume the writer stated at the time that it was “unquestionably a remarkable effort for one man and nothing quite like it has appeared before in the annals of petroleum literature”. The same can be said of this, Dr. Herold's latest work. This time it is the story of oil well drainage shorn of mathematics (except in a brief appendix) but replete with recorded incidents and observations skilfully interpreted in terms of what is unseen in natural oil reservoirs. The basis of this work is primary analysis of any particular North American oilfield by reference to a questionnaire of twenty-one questions (introduction) to which appropriate answers, where they can be given, are collated and resulting data segregated according to whether the oilfield is Palaeozoic or Cenozoic. Oil Well Drainage By Dr. Stanley C. Herold. Pp. xv + 407. (Stanford University, Calif.: Stanford University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1942.) 30s. net.