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A Tribute to Laurie Patrick Dake

Dear L.P. Dake your exit on the 19 th of July 1999 has kept us to ponder about how a
real reservoir behaves, in the family of reservoir and petroleum engineers your name
rings bell and it will be relatively unfair if you are not remembered . You gave all you
had to the development and advancement of reservoir and petroleum engineering.
Though some schools of thought find it difficult to b elieve what you proved about the
behaviour of the reservoir. The entropy of a system is always on increase but cannot
attain a maximum limit. That is why the knowledge a bout the reservoir will never
attain an optimum point. There are only fluctuations in the harmony; motion, a
perpetual motion, reversible in the mea n. There will therefore always be good and
bad, rich and poor, negative and positive, equality and inequality, man and woman,
true and false etc. There will always be unity in diversity, unity of opposites, negation
of negation etc. Therefore there will always be processes-temperature gradient and
entropy growth will thus never attain its maximum in this universe. TAKE IT OR
LEAVE IT.

Nobody has ever been to the reservoir, all what we use are manmade tools which
are prone to failure....so the reservoir is always right. Oh “Laurie” it is 11yrs today
since you left us, but your contributions in the reservoir en gineering profession lives
on. You imprinted your foots in the sands of time. Your name will always be
remembered as long as this professio n last. You went beyond the apparent clarity of
mere science of the earth.

You opened an accepted horizon ----visible but sterile and another imaginative and
creative one, though the creative horizon in a sense defines the boundaries between
spirit and matter, resources and banality. You went spiritual to predict the behaviour
of the reservoir using the simple material balance equation.....but from the words of
Dr. C.O.C Okoh “For as yet neither can we simulate most conditions in the outer
space, nor are we in a posi tion to accurately give account of the interiors of the micro
particles. In fact, in mathematical terms, we do not know much about the zero, not to
talk about the infinity, they are concepts (symbols) we created and conveniently
apply, and knowing them is the struggle and the life itself. The part can be greater
than the whole and vice versa”.

Remember! ,who that is dead and is never forgotten is not dead............Your


memories live in the minds of every reservoir and petroleum engineer.....May your
soul find rest any where you are.

Stanley Buduka

(Lecturer; Petroleum and Gas Engineering Department University of Port


Harcourt)

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