Waterflooding

Waterflooding is an important method of improving recovery, but successful waterflood performance requires a sound design. Waterflooding begins with understanding the basic principles of immiscible displacement, then presents a systematic procedure for designing a waterflood. The emphasis is on fundamental concepts and their application in solving various waterflooding problems. Design procedures that can be prepared as small computer programs and selected computer subprograms for more complex designs are presented.

Author Biography

G. Paul Willhite is the Ross H. Forney Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Kansas. He has been a member of the faculty since 1969, serving as chair of the department from 1988 to 1996 and interim chair from 2003 to 2004. In 1974, he cofounded the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project and served as codirector from 1974 to 2009. Before joining the faculty, he worked in the Production Research Division of Continental Oil Company in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Willhite holds a BS degree from Iowa State University and a PhD degree from Northwestern University, both in chemical engineering. He is the author of the SPE textbook Waterflooding and coauthor of the SPE textbook Enhanced Oil Recovery. Willhite is a Distinguished Member of SPE; he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty in 1981, the Lester C. Uren Award in 1986, and the John Franklin Carll Award in 2001. He also received the IOR Pioneer Award at the 2004 SPE/DOE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium. Willhite was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006.