After an exploration effort has successfully discovered petroleum within an acceptable range of reserve potential, the challenge becomes how to best optimize extraction of recoverable reserves in a manner yielding an acceptable economic return on total cash expenditures required over the life of the project. Surface and subsurface conditions of a discovery have considerable impact on the extraction process, its related costs, and ultimate project success or failure. Technical success is one thing; economic success is another. Real world experience has shown that economic success is by far the more difficult accomplishment, as it is dependent on factors well beyond the means of science and technology.

Petroleum reserves exist as oil or gas within trapping sections of reservoir rock formed by structural and or stratigraphic geologic features. Water is the predominant fluid found in the permeability and porosity of subsurface strata within the earth's crust. Both...