Abstract: Water?drive characteristic curves and decline curve as the methods of production performance evaluation play significant roles in recoverable reserves evaluation and development index prediction in developed oilfields. But direct relationship between the two methods cann抰 be established due to different theoretical bases of them. Oil production vs time expression is derived from Arps decline formula in this paper and it is considered that if an expression related to transient decline rate and oil production could be obtained from the deformation of a water?drive characteristic curve expression, there must be a kind of relationship between the water?drive type curve and Arps decline curve. 4 commonly used water?drive characteristic curves are selected. Assume that liquid production doesn’t change with time,take the derivative of time twice, expressions of the relationships among the 4 type curves in regard to transient decline rate and oil production are obtained. The decline trend of Type B water?drive type curve is in accordance with that of harmonic decline, the decline trend of Type C is matched with that of hyperbolic decline when n=0.5. Type A and D curves are similar to Arps decline curve only when the reservoir water cut is relatively high. Based on the expressions of transient decline rate and oil production of the 4 water?drive characteristic curves, a method is established for development index prediction, whose high accuracy has been proved by some cases