Orcutt Third Zone Waterflood: A Successful Project

This paper was prepared for the 41st Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Dallas, Tex., Oct. 2–5, 1966. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. The Orcutt field, Santa Barbara County, California, was discovered in 1902. The Third Zone waterflood began in 1950 with a one well pilot test. The present Third Zone waterflood was initiated in 1963. The development of the project from the pilot to its current status is reviewed. The response attributable to pilot, peripheral and pattern injection is discussed along with operating principles which are followed. It is concluded that the change from a peripheral injection plan to pattern injection has been beneficial because of the reduced project life and improved well performance. Introduction The Orcutt field is located approximately 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles, California, (Fig. 1) and 8 miles south of Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County. Careaga 10, the discovery well, was drilled in 1902 by the Western Union Oil Company (Shell Oil). Union Oil Company's first well in the Orcutt field, Hartnell 1, was completed that same year. This well, together with the discovery of the Lompoc field, nine miles south of the Orcutt area, was of particular significance as they were the forerunners to other fields that Union would produce in the Central California Coastal area. There are three productive horizons underlying the Orcutt field. These are designated as the First, Second and Third Zones. This report is concerned with water injection into the Third Zone. The present areal extent of the project is outlined in Fig. 2. RESERVOIR CHARACTERISTICS Structure The productive portion of the Orcutt Third Zone reservoir lies within a faulted anticlinal dome. Contours on top of the Third Zone, Fig. 3, show the attitude of the structure.