Chapter 12: Waterflood Case Studies

The purpose of this chapter is to present overviews of several major, historical waterfloods that are reasonably well-documented in the SPE technical literature.¹ These waterfloods are all in large oil fields and have been ongoing for decades. In a few cases, the oil fields’ development has moved from secondary waterflooding to tertiary [enhanced oil recovery (EOR)] as the waterfloods approached their economic limit and/or technically and economically viable EOR methods were identified and applied.

Many, likely thousands of, smaller oil fields have been waterflooded in the US, Russia, and elsewhere around the world. However, there is insufficient public information about these fields to discuss any of them here. Also, a small number of case studies have been chosen because each is somewhat unique in its technical and operational issues. These six case studies cover a range of waterfloods with respect to rock types, oil properties, geographic settings, development approaches, and major operational changes in the decades following startup.