翻譯：THE OPEC oil cartel is about to turn 40, and the mood in the run-up to the grand heads-of-state party in Venezuela in less than three weeks time is jubilant. Not quite two years ago,oil was $10 a barrel and the cartel was on the brink of collapse. Now the oil price is well above $30 a barrel, and it shows little sign of coming down.

翻譯：If Colonel Drake, Uncle Billy smith , Anthony Lucas , and the untold thousands of other members of the fraternity of drilling pioneers were alive today , they would no doubt be fascinated and amazed by the proliferation of drilling tools and techniques that have been developed since those primitive days in Pennsylvania and Texas . Undoubltly , they would also be impress by the great numbers of drilling rigs at work today-------over two thousand in the USA alone.

翻譯：For example ,the determination of the pump-setting depth and size of plunger that will lead to the maximum pumping rate in a particular well is a problem of considerable difficulty, which even today has not been fully or saris factorial solved; another interesting problem is that of gas anchors(bottom-hole separators); yet another is the interpretation of the results obtained form devices for determining the depth of the fluid level in the annulus during pumping.

翻譯：The fluids of a petroleum reservoir are generally gas, oil, and water in varying proportions. Each phase can differ widely in composition and properties. Gas and oil, either as separate fluids or in mixtures, change their state or phase as reservoir pressure changes.

翻譯：A major oil company usually initiates the sequence of events that leads to the drilling of oil and gas wells in foreign fields, but independent oil operators pay for most of the wells in the United States. In fact, about 80% of all wells drilled in the U.S. today are financed by independents.

翻譯：Nearly three-fifths of all known petroleum reserves on Earth is to be found in the territory of the various Arabic-speaking countries. Kuwait , for instance , which is a small nation at the head of the Persian Gulf , with an area only three-fourths that of Massachusetts and a population of about half a million , posseses about one-fifth of all the known petroleum reserves in the world.

翻譯：Gas lift is the method of artificial lift that uses an external source of high-pressure gas for supplementing formation gas to lift the well fluids. The primary consideration in the selection of availability and compression cost of gas.

翻譯：A third means of assessing the maturity of rocks is by the pyrolysis of a small amount of the source rock. The temperature is raised rapidly and the material vaporized or formed by thermal breakdown of the kerogen is passed through a detector which records, on a temperature base, peaks representing these two bursts of volatile material. To a first approximation the peak at the lower temperature represents oil already generated; the peak at the higher temperature indicates oil capable of being generated at adequate maturity.

翻譯：This chapter deals with the fundamental properties of reservoir rocks. The properties discussed are (1) porosity - a measure of the void space in a rock; (2) Permeability - a measure of the fluid transmissivity of a rock; and (3) fluid saturation - a measure of the gross void space occupied by a fluid. These properties constitute a set of fundamental parameters by which the rock may be described quantitatively.

翻譯：Other additives are often added to the fracturing fluids for special proposes. Corrosion inhibitors may be used if the fracturing fluids might cause corrosion in the tubular goods in the well.Other additives are used to make the part of the fracturing fluid which is moving against the pipe walls behave almost like lubricating oil while the remaining fracturing fluid take an almost solid form to carry the maximum amount of proppant.