Lawnboy, ricebrnr..Lawnboy, you are a miracle man - you can print, read, and make the wife happy at the same time. I have to call you to find out how you can keep the wife happy while posting !
Ricebrnr, I agee with you on the definition of "volitile", although in 22 years in the patch I have never seen or heard or of a reservoir being described this way. When I first heard the term on this board, adn then read a few NR's, my first impression was a reservoir containing high GOR oil (gas/oil ratio). Not uncommon for very light crude, but, it can have a detrimental effect on total production if secondary or tertiary recovery is not implemented early in the producing life of the reservoir. The problem here is that if the oil has a high GOR(light ends C1, C2, C3, C4) that are produced in large quantites, the reservoir pressure can drop quite quickly, thereby reducing production rates. I can recall one reservoir that I personally had worked for quite some time on - lite crude, high initial GOR. When the reservoir was initially produced at a high rate, the reservoir pressure dropped, and gas flashed off within the reservoir, creating a gas cap. As this gas cap was produced, the res. pressure dropped faster. It took several years of water injection to get the res pressure back to the point where the gas went back into solution (gas cap eliminated).
As i've posted many times before, gas production with oil is not necessarily a good thing. If you know what you have, and can take the appropriate, remedial action to deal with the gas, then you can have a greater chance of maximixing oil production.
Don't know about NF regulations, but from I've been exposed to, if you have an oil reservior, the govt will make you do what is necessary to maximixe oil recovery BEFORE going for the gas. Again, I caution people on this board regarding gas - if we are gong for oil, we do not want to see an excess amount of gas, over the original gas/oil ratio, being produced.
Just My Humble Comments/Opinions for the night.