THEORY OF WATERFLOODING IN FRACTURED RESERVOIRS.

A new theory is presented of the incompressible flow of two fluids (water displacing oil) in a fractured porous material composed of two distinct media - matrix blocks of low transmissibility embedded in a highly transmissible medium. This general description includes heterogeneous porous media not necessarily of the fractured type. The theory accounts for an important fact not considered in former analytical models found in the literature. The blocks downstream in a reservoir subject to waterflood are exposed to a varying water saturation resulting from the water imbibition of the upstream blocks. Expressions for the water-oil ratio and the cumulative-oil production are derived, allowing a complete economic evaluation of a fractured-reservoir waterflood project.