A reservoir (etymology: from French réservoir a "storehouse" ) is an enlarged natural or artificial lake, storage pond or impoundment created using a dam or lock to store water. Reservoirs can be created by controlling a stream that drains an existing body of water. They can also be constructed in river valleys using a dam. Alternately, a reservoir can be built by excavating flat ground and/or constructing retaining walls and levees.

Tank reservoirs store liquids or gases in storage tanks that may be elevated, at grade level, or buried. Tank reservoirs for water are also called cisterns.

Underground reservoirs store almost exclusively water and petroleum below ground.

Types

Reservoirs dammed in valleys

A dam constructed in a valley relies on the natural topography to provide most of the basin of the reservoir. Dams are typically located at a narrow part of a valley downstream of a natural basin. The valley sides act as natural walls, with the dam located at the narrowest practical point to provide strength and the lowest cost of construction. In many reservoir construction projects, people have to be moved and re-housed, historical artifacts moved or rare environments relocated. Examples are the temples of Abu Simbel (which were moved before the construction of the Aswan Dam to create Lake Nasser from the Nile in Egypt), the relocation of the village of Capel Celyn during the construction of Llyn Celyn, and the relocation of Borgo San Pietro of Petrella Salto during the construction of Lake Salto.

Reservoir is a four song CD EP by Irish singer/songwriter Fionn Regan. It was released 20 January 2003 on Anvil Records.

Track listing

References

A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface pool of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. The naturally occurring hydrocarbons, such as crude oil or natural gas, are trapped by overlying rock formations with lower permeability. Reservoirs are found using hydrocarbon exploration methods.

Formation

Crude oil found in all oil reservoirs formed in the Earth's crust from the remains of once-living things. Crude oil is properly known as petroleum, and is used as fossil fuel. Evidence indicates that millions of years of heat and pressure changed the remains of microscopic plant and animal into oil and natural gas.

Roy Nurmi, an interpretation adviser for Schlumberger, described the process as follows: "Plankton and algae, proteins and the life that's floating in the sea, as it dies, falls to the bottom, and these organisms are going to be the source of our oil and gas. When they're buried with the accumulating sediment and reach an adequate temperature, something above 50 to 70 °C they start to cook. This transformation, this change, changes them into the liquid hydrocarbons that move and migrate, will become our oil and gas reservoir."