Talk:Petroleum reservoir

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Petroleum reservoir is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.

Frankly, I'm surprised WP can be called an encyclopedia without some nice hearty articles on the oilfield. As my brother's belt buckle says, "It ain't oilfield, it ain't [crap]." Maybe I can get a roughneck or two on here to expand this... Uriah923 06:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Oil formation

The long quote by Ray Nurmi, while accurate as an example, might mislead some into thinking that all oil is ~500 million years old. A more general view would be appropriate.Plazak 18:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. It really should be re-written more encyclopedically, but for now I just removed the first sentence of the quote. Cheers Geologyguy 18:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrocarbon reservoir

The article of this topic is relevant to natural gas too (and often these reservoirs have fractions of oil too). A better title could be Hydrocarbon reservoir. Are there any objections or other discussion? +mt 07:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

You have an excellent point that gas should be included. "Petroleum" is regarded in the industry as encompassing both oil and gas. How about Petroleum reservoir? Plazak (talk) 13:05, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I've also thought that name, but I'm not sure if Petroleum is oil and gas or only crude oil (according to the Wikipedia article, petroleum has hydrocarbon lengths C₅H₁₂ to C₄₂H₈₆, which are all liquid). "Hydrocarbon" is technically more encompassing, since it includes oil and gas phases (or crude oil and natural gas). However, checking into my "Sedimentary Petrology" book (M.E. Tucker), petroleum is oil and gas as you mentioned. I'm not sure what is better: Wikipedia consistency or industry-speak consistency? +mt 19:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

We can make it anything we want. It would be easy to modify the Petroleum article to reflect the fact that it has both a popular meaning (crude oil) and a broader industry meaning (oil and gas). I myself would vote for "Petroleum reservoir," because I think that it is the more common term within the industry, but either one would be preferable yo "oil reservoir." Since we can set up redirects to point to a single article, either "Hydrocarbon reservoir" or "Petroleum reservoir" would be good. Plazak (talk) 20:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Alright, we'll go with petroleum reservoir, since it is more popular of the two (according to Google search hits), and uses more understandable terms (i.e., petroleum vs hydrocarbon). +mt 23:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)