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Waterflooding & Enhanced Oil Recovery Overview

Inside this lesson
  • Describe primary recovery as using the reservoir's own energy and recovering only a modest fraction of the original oil in place
  • Explain secondary recovery, mainly waterflooding: injecting fluid to maintain reservoir pressure and sweep oil toward the producers
  • Name the mobility ratio and sweep efficiency as the concepts governing how much oil a waterflood recovers
  • List the three families of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) - thermal (heat for heavy oil), chemical (polymer, surfactant, alkaline), and miscible gas (CO2 or hydrocarbon gas) - and match each to its mechanism

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Educational content covering topics typical of an undergraduate petroleum-engineering curriculum. Not a substitute for accredited coursework, and not suitable for real well, reservoir, or field decisions without review by a licensed professional engineer. Well-control content is conceptual awareness only and is not IWCF/IADC training. References to reserves or resource classifications are descriptive context only, not regulatory disclosure or booking guidance.