Potential for Future Water Flood Projects in Wyoming

Wyoming, perhaps more than any other state, is dependent on revenues generated from the development and sales of minerals within its borders and has a vested interest in ensuring that its resources are properly and efficiently exploited. Maximizing the efficiency of oil and gas production in Wyoming is one of the primary goals of the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI). Potential methods or practices that can improve or enhance the recovery efficiency of oil and gas production in the state are of paramount interest. Likewise, those policies or practices that hinder such efforts are also important to discuss.

Wyoming has nearly one billion barrels of proved oil reserves, a significant portion of which is still on primary production. Assessing the potential for secondary recovery from current oil fields is always a daunting task and requires evaluations regarding whether any given field will respond favorably to secondary recovery efforts.

This paper makes general assumptions regarding the feasibility of using a water flood to enhance oil recovery in a field based on publicly available data. The conclusions resulting from these assumptions are meant to be a guideline for the potential of future water flooding and are not meant to provide detailed evaluations of any given field’s ultimate recovery.