Cyclic Water Injection: Improved Oil Recovery at Zero Cost

Cyclic injection is a process that improves waterflooding efficiency in heterogeneous reservoirs. The concept of cyclic injection is based on (1) pulsed injection and (2) altemating waterflood patterns. Cyclic injection has been successfully applied in a number of sandstone and carbonate oil fields in Russia. In the rest of the world, pulsed injection has had limited application, and only in naturally fractured reservoirs. Although changing the waterflood patterns is a common approach to deal with increasing water cuts a more systematic approach with both pulsed injection and alternating flow directions is not.