Flood repatterning

Extended life support

How can you keep improving a flood? What's the secret to longevity?

AppIntel AI shows the repatterning efforts of operators and the success or failure of these attempts.

This blog post is brought to you by one of our information partners, Proven Reserves Exploitation Ltd.

One operator discussed with the regulator his continuing efforts to balance the patterns in his 5-spot turned line-drive flood. He showed each pattern of the flood and compared recovery factor to voidage replacement and amount injected.

You can see his plans and mapping from our self serve portal.

Repatterning a flood

You might call it sloshing water around. By repatterning a water flood you can significantly add to its sweep and recovery.

Just by selecting new injectors, you can push water into different areas of the reservoir and sweep more oil out.

For example take a classic inverted 5-spot. By shutting in the central injector and beginning injection in two opposing corners of the pattern, you can sweep an entirely new section of the reservoir.

This change of sweep can provide improved results for decades. We know of pools that started on water flood in the 1950's and are still going strong. They are still improving recovery by repatterning after 65 years!

Pattern balancing

Most floods have been neglected for a while. When an experienced flood engineer reviews the forgotten flood, he will find that much of the injection has been going into only a few of the patterns. Some patterns will be over injected, some will have received very little support.

By judging which of the patterns has the best recovery, he can improve the other pattern to perform the same. Switching injection into unsupported patterns usually produces great recovery enhancements.

Watching others floods

Reviewing others floods in formations similar to yours can give you clues about what type of patterns work well and which are disasters.

The history of floods is all contained in AppIntel AI. Each step in a flood's history is carefully documented by industry and vetted by a picky regulator.

AppIntel AI contains the pessimism (or optimism) of an operator. It reveals the operator's short and long term plans.

AppIntel AI contains an exposé of practical technology use. It shows how technology works out in the field. It indicates success and failure of each type of technology. It even offers ways to conduct look-back analysis on technology installations.

The best way to stay on top of oil field technology is through AppIntel AI.

You can get new industry activity regarding heavy oil flood delivered to your inbox the morning after they are submitted. AppIntel AI does that.

Cheapest, fastest, best

AppIntel AI costs less than a quarter of one person's salary. For the same price DIY AI like a team of six man data-mining department, you could supply all your flood engineers with AppIntel.

AppIntel's search functions are quicker than made-in-house searches. AppIntel's collection of historic applications is larger than any in-house collection we've seen.

AppIntel AI doesn't take sick days or vacations and it works on weekends. It doesn't miss any new technology -- it's contents are triple checked for accuracy. And it adds search by UWI for submissions that don't even have an associated location.

Tags: Flood

Granger Low   Updated 23 Jan 2026

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