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Ohh...... I think post 36 is pretty much psychobabble. I work for an E&P company that will drill 1200 wells in the mid-continent alone this year. Other offices in my company drill offshore and in canada.

Oil fields aren't replenished. There is fixed amount of oil that is trapped in sand, trapped by stone or shale that will hold the pressure. The trick to getting it all out is knowing the perosity of the sand (size of the grains) and determining how far from the bottom of the casing this perosity will allow oil and gas to flow to your well. Then you figure out where the sand (ancient river) runs... and you drill in the same zone far enough away from your first well to get more of the trapped gas. (the second well is called developmental drilling). And if you miss on the 2nd well.... you just threw away a million dollars or so. But the geologists and resevoire engineers are pretty good at figuring out where the sand runs.

They call the sand "pay zones". And the know exactly how many feet of sand there is ... size of the grains of sand, amount of pressure on the well etc.... and this tells them how many reserves they can book to that well.

That's the way it works in reality.