Some Aspects of Unitized or Cooperative Waterflood Development

Kansas Waterflood Symposium of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME,19 November, Great Bend, Kansas Abstract This paper examines the use of voluntary Unitization Agreements and Cooperative Agreements in forming waterflood projects in the Lansing-Kansas City formation. General characteristics and probable types of floods are discussed in relation to the two basic types of agreements. It is concluded that both types of agreements will find a place in Lansing, Kansas City water flood operation but that the fully unitized operation is usually the superior method. A compulsory unitization law in Kansas would greatly expedite the formation of unitized projects. Introduction During the past decade, the oil industry has made great technical strides in the fields of drilling, geology, geophysics, equipment development and reservoir engineering. These advances coupled with wise regulatory body regulations have enabled the industry to operate profitably and still provide the public with unlimited supplies of petroleum products at reasonable prices. This goal has been achieved even though the cost of replacing reserves has constantly increased due to deeper drilling, increased labor and material costs and a decline in the exploratory discovery ratio. One of the major factors involved in this accomplishment has been the increased use of secondary recovery by waterflooding. It is apparent that in the more mature producing provinces, current primary oil discoveries are relatively unimportant and the secondary recovery mechanisms are contributing an increasingly great portion of the domestic production. As previous papers presented here today have pointed out, the water flood possibilities of reservoirs in the Lansing-Kansas City group appear to be very attractive. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of unitized and cooperative agreements in developing these waterfloods. While this is necessarily a broad subject, I have attempted to restrict my comments to areas which will specifically apply to Lansing and Kansas City problems.