Seventeen Years Of Successful Pliocene Water Flooding, Dominguez Oil Field, Los Angeles County, California
Authors: Barnds Ray M. 
Published: December 2007

Barnds Jr., Ray M., Member AIME, Union Oil Co. of California, Santa Fe Springs, California

Publication Rights Reserved

This paper is to be presented at the California Regional Meeting in Los Angeles, Calif., Nov. 5–6, 1964, and is considered the property of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Permission to publish is hereby restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words, with no illustrations, unless the paper is specifically released to the press by the Editor of the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is granted on request, providing proper credit is given that publication and the original presentation of the paper.

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 considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines with the paper.

The operating histories of three water flood projects in Pliocene reservoir sands of the Dominguez Field are reviewed in comparative format in order to present not only field case histories, but a comparison of three distinct flood operations in geologically similar reservoirs.

The three floods, one of which was initiated in 1947 as a field experiment, have produced 6,732,000 barrels of flood oil during the past seventeen years, 2,603,000 barrels of which was previously unobtainable by normal production practices.

The comparison of the three projects serves to emphasize the importance of reservoir containment and control, total pool injectivity and the similarity in ultimate displacement efficiencies observed in the three projects.

FIELD HISTORY

The Dominguez Oil Field, located fourteen miles south of the center of the city of Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County, California, was discovered in September 1923 with the completion of the Union Oil Company of California well "Callender 1-A".

The field was systematically developed by four principal operators in the following thirty years.

In 1947, with the end of primary development in sight, the Union Oil Company of California initiated the field's first water injection program in Hellman 3, a marginal Third Zone producing well, as one of California's first field experiments in evaluating the effectiveness of injected water as means of increasing oil recovery, This first attempt at water flooding in the Dominguez Field, while being only moderately successful due to the presence of local faulting, was followed by the conversion of two additional producing wells to injection service during the next five years in the same zone and fault block, which was subsequently designated the Third Zone, North East Central Pool (3NEC) water flood project.

The results of the injection program and the experience gained during these first years of the Dominguez Field water flooding history served to emphasize the significant effect secondary recovery would play in the later history of the field. In 1954, the Shell Oil Company, the Dominguez Oil Fields Company, and the Union Oil Company initiated California's first full scale pattern water flood in the First Zone, East Central Pool (IEC).

In 1956, the Union Oil Company initiated the Third and Fourth Tones, North West Central Pool (3-4NWC) peripheral flood project as the third major pool water flood project in the Dominguez Field.