It is only in traps that oil and gas are found as distinct, coherent fluids; thus traps should yield the most positive information about these fluids. If we can understand what is happening in the traps, we should be able to look back along the migration trail with special insight to what has occurred. That insight may even extend all the way back to the "source."

This study concludes that traps are the most logical places for hydrocarbon components to be put together as the distinct fluid mixtures which we call oil and gas. It follows that traps are not just passive receivers or containers of hydrocarbon mixtures put together elsewhere. Effective oil and gas traps of different well-known types have a very important feature in common: structurally and stratigraphically, they are designed to discharge waters from depth. Thus they function as active focal mechanisms to gather and process feedstock waters carrying hydrocarbons and other organic derivatives. It is a forced-draft system. The concept reinforces the anticlinal theory, but without total dependence on fluid buoyancy. Moreover, it honors all factual observations made around oil and gas d posits.

Very simply, the most important function of a trap is to leak water while retaining hydrocarbons. The water can leak through the enclosing membranes and covering strata because they are water-soaked, like a wick. The hydrocarbons and other organics are separated from the waters as they pass through the trap. The separation is caused by abrupt changes in pressure, temperature, and probably salinity--which in turn are jointly related to the basic change in direction of feedstock (water) movement from lateral to upward. Coalescence of hydrocarbons makes tiny bubbles or globules which grow in size and move less easily than water. The ultimate composition of a trapped hydrocarbon mixture depends on the respective residence times of the various components of that mixture which in turn depen on: (1) what the water carried to the trap, (2) what the trap retained, and (3) what was the pore-volume exchange rate.