How the oil wells get filled again and again eventhough 100% crude is taken from that ?

Question

In middle east (Gulf countries), still oil wells are full eventhough they are taking crude at full swing. How it happen , some people say new crude storage getting from distance places and it is reaching to the oil well through sedimentary rocks by gravity flow ,Is it true? if not what is the principle behind this?

Answer 1

we can't take 100% of the oil in the ground. Your hypothesises are wrong.

To take oil, we have to spend more and more energy as the quantity of oil left diminishes. Once the energy requiered gets too close to the quantity of energy contained in oil, extraction stops. But even then, there is still a lot of oil left.


In middle east, they can take a lot of oil from the ground, because there IS a lot of oil in the ground. (and right now, their wells should be about half empty)

Answer 2

The amount of oil on Earth is finite. Once the oil is extracted, it is gone. But there are ways to squeeze an oil well of every last drop where in the past some oil might have stayed untapped in the ground.

One way to get that last drop of oil is to put the well under high gas pressure. The pressure then pushes the residual oil through the pores of the rock bed, where the oil was trapped, toward the well pumps.

Oil can travel great distances underground to get to the pumps. Sandstone is certainly porous enough for the lighter crude oils to seep through under its own forces. But because it's porous, sandstone does not trap oil. Some other kind of rock has to do that.

My guess is that there are mutliple wells sunk into a single pool of crude that feeds all the wells. That is certainly the case for domestic, U.S. pools...like the Yates pool in Texas.

Answer 3

Imagine you have a large puddle of water thats 30 or 40 feet across, and is 5 feet deep. Now, you have a well pump that is about 3" high, and it uses a tube the size of a swizzle stick for coffee. How long pumping out a drop a minute would it take for that puddle to run dry? A year? A decade? A century? Now, lets say that puddle is right next to another puddle- you manged to pump the one puddle dry, but another puddle thats the same size is right next to it- so it flows by gravity to where the orginal puddle is. Once again, you just keep on pumping,,,one drop at a time,,,for a year, a decade or a century until its dry

Answer 4

T maximum With present technology u can only take maximum 60% from a reservoir.rest will get trapped in the rocks,

We can take it for long time if we are taking in sustainable rate.i-e calculated flow rate and pressure.

Well will supply oil till the pressure of the well which supports the oil to come out that is oil column above the reservoir level,Normally wells will have around 200 bar pressure,

If the pressure goes down we have to support with gas injection or water injection

Note: Number of wells can be drilled from a reservoir

Answer 5

when pumping out crude oils the derrick operators return the salt or sea water into the wells to raise the levels constantly so the oils floated up all the time

Answer 6

Finndo reply has got it spot on. After extracting to a certain stage, it is no longer economical viable to keep pumping. It is like copper, gold etc mines. They are not totally extracted 100%. Once it is no longer cost effective, there really isnt any point in continuing. Would you spend 1 dollar to extract back 60cents worth of minerals?