The drill‐stem test: The petroleum industry's deep‐well pumping test

Drill‐stem tests provide the petroleum industry information on three critical properties of subsurface formations —pressure head, permeability, and water chemistry –that the ground‐water hydrologist also seeks in making pumping tests of water wells. As it is increasingly necessary to study the hydraulic and geochemical properties of deep‐lying rocks in order to understand the behavior of ground water, data on drill‐stem tests made by the petroleum industry become an important source of information which otherwise is unobtainable because of the high cost. Data from these tests made by methods currently in use are highly useful in water studies. An obvious conclusion is that both petroleum engineering and ground‐water hydrology stand to profit substantially from an increase in the interchange of ideas and techniques.