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Glite Dictionary
🌊 A big flood 💧 To flood with water 🛢️ Oil recovery method
waterflood

waterflood

7.5
To inject water into underground rock that holds oil to push more oil out
  • noun
  • /ˈwɔːtərˌflʌd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : inyección de agua
  • The modeling objective was to more accurately predict the future production performance of the overall reservoir, the performance of individual wells with regard to water coning, the scope and rate of water encroachment, and the volumetric waterflood sweep efficiency.

Examples

  • Production was down for the quarter, primarily due to eight of the better-producing wells being converted to injector wells to optimize our long-term waterflood distribution pattern.

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  • The oil company implemented a new waterflood technique to boost oil recovery from the aging reservoir.

  • After decades of drilling, they decided to enhance the waterflood method to improve efficiency in oil extraction.

  • The engineer explained how the waterflood process helps maintain pressure in the oil field and maximizes production.

Surface Forms

waterflood singular
waterfloods plural

Morphology

waterflood = water + flood (semi-transparent) = water + flood

The form is transparently water + flood, but the sense as a petroleum-engineering technique (injecting water into a reservoir to increase oil recovery) is specialized and not directly inferable by general learners.

Etymology

Waterflood is built from water and flood, which together mean 'to flood with water'. In oil work it is a way of pumping water into an oil field to push the oil out, so the name shows exactly what the method does.