Reservoir Drive Mechanism:-

A reservoir drive mechanism is the force that pushes the hydrocarbon out of the reservoir rock
and into the wellbore as the fluid level near the wellbore drops. There are five main types of
reservoir drive mechanisms:

 Water drive
 Gas expansion
 Solution gas
 Rock or compaction drive
 Gravity drainage

Usually, one of these types is more dominant than the others, but sometimes they can work
together. The type of reservoir drive mechanism affects how much hydrocarbon can be recovered
from a reservoir.

Reservoir Pressure Trends for Drive Mechanism

Water Drive:
Water drive is a force that maintains high pressure from the aquifer (100% voidage replacement)
with little pressure loss at the wellbore. The water in the aquifer slightly increases in volume,
pushing the oil or gas out of the reservoir rock and towards the borehole as the pressure around
the borehole decreases. This force only occurs when the aquifer is as good as or better than the
reservoir in quality and has a much bigger size than the reservoir (about 10 times) or is
connected to surface recharge. Water drive works better in oil reservoirs than in gas reservoirs.
On a semi-log graph of production decline, the curve is usually flat.
When the aquifer is smaller and/or has worse quality, the water does not expand much into the
reservoir as oil or gas is taken out. This is a partial water drive.

A Schematic Example of Fingering in a Water Drive Reservoir

Gas Expansion:
Gas expansion drive is a force that helps move hydrocarbons to the wellbore when there is little
or no water drive. Gas that is free in a gas reservoir or in the oil reservoir’s gas cap gets bigger to
fill up the space left by the produced hydrocarbons. In an oil system, this makes the fluid
pressure in the reservoir drop slower and keeps the hydrocarbon production going. Pressure goes
down depending on how much hydrocarbon is taken out of the reservoir and how good the
reservoir is. Reservoirs with gas expansion drives usually have a small aquifer or none at all.
Solution Gas:
When crude oil is under high pressure, it can have a lot of gas dissolved in it. The more gas in the
oil, the more the oil can be squeezed. In oil reservoirs where there is not much or no water drive,
the oil can be pushed to the wellbore by the oil getting bigger because of the gas in it getting
bigger too. This is called a solution gas (or dissolved gas or depletion) drive. When the pressure
goes lower than the bubble point in the reservoir, tiny gas bubbles that are not connected to each
other appear in the holes in the rock, also helping the oil move to the wellbore. When the free gas
in the reservoir reaches about 5–10%, the bubbles join together and the gas flows to the wellbore
as a different phase from the oil. When this happens, the oil production goes down and the gas
production goes up quickly because the gas can flow easier through the rock.
Rock Drive:
When the fluid pressure in the reservoir goes down, the pressure on the solids, or Pnc, goes up
because the fluid pressure supports less of the overburden’s weight. Some reservoirs collapse
their pore space when Pnc increases. This can help push out the hydrocarbons. Rock drive
happens often in reservoirs that are shallow or have loose sediments. It can also happen where
high fluid pressures have kept the porosity open. Some North Sea reservoirs of Danian Chalk are
good examples of reservoirs with high pressure and loose sediments.

Gravity Drainage:
Gravity drainage is a process where oil moves down through a reservoir because of gravity. This
needs high vertical permeability or beds that are tilted sharply and so it happens a lot in
reservoirs that have cracks. Efficiency can be very high (more than 75%), especially where beds
are very slanted, the oil is not very thick, and the oil at the top of the column is swapped by gas
that comes out of the oil.
Combination:
Sometimes, more than one drive mechanism can work together to move hydrocarbons out of the
reservoir. For example, a gas expansion drive often happens with a partial water drive. Water
drives can be improved by imbibition effects, which is a minor drive type. Oil reservoirs that are
not saturated with gas can start producing by solution gas drive, then switch to partial water drive
when the gas in the oil loses its energy and becomes less effective.

We can sometimes identify combined drives by looking at production decline curves, especially
when we plot oil, gas, and water by their rates. All the plots of different wells from the same field
should have the same horizontal and vertical scales so we can compare them easily.
Sources:
(1) An Introduction to Gravity Drainage | Enhanced Oil Recovery | Books ….
https://onepetro.org/books/book/37/chapter/10944354/An-Introduction-to-Gravity-
Drainage.
(2) Oil Recovery by Gravity Drainage – OnePetro.
https://onepetro.org/spejournal/article/20/03/139/121877/Oil-Recovery-by-Gravity-
Drainage.
(3) The effect of gravity drainage mechanism on oil recovery by reservoir ….
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13202-021-01430-9.
(4) Reservoir drive mechanisms – AAPG Wiki.
https://wiki.aapg.org/Reservoir_drive_mechanisms.
(5) Undefined. https://doi.org/10.2118/7424-PA.
(6) The Defining Series: Reservoir Drive Mechanisms | SLB. https://www.slb.com/resource-
library/oilfield-review/defining-series/defining-reservoir-drive-mechanisms.
(7) Reservoir drive mechanisms | Energy Glossary.
https://glossary.slb.com/en/terms/r/reservoir_drive_mechanisms.