Understanding the injected-water preferential paths is a key aspect of waterflood optimization in reservoirs characterized by strong vertical and areal heterogeneities. Devising specific work flows for such applications is important.
As the discovery rate of new hydrocarbon resources decreases, the need for more-efficient enhanced-oil-recovery processes increases. Unlike in the past, however, when the efficiency was defined in terms of maximizing the recovery factor (RF), the new interpretation of efficiency is based on optimizing the balance between RF and the reduction of carbon footprint.