Paper: Pilot Waterflooding In the Langlie Mattix Pool Lea County, New Mexico

The Langlie Mattix Pool is located in southeast Lea County, New Mexico, as shown in Fig. 1, and contains approximately 1200 wells drilled on 60,000 acres. Discovered some 30 years ago, it is now essentially depleted of primary oil. Waterflood potential appears excellent and there are at present 10 water injection projects in operation and several more in various stages of development. One of the earliest of these is the Woolworth Unit, operated by Amerada Petroleum Corporation. The Woolworth Unit was formed in late 1962 and began pilot water injection in early 1963. A pilot project was considered essential at that time for the following reasons: (1) The unknown floodability of the reservoir. (2) The lack of reservoir definition (virtually no logs or core analyses). (3) The questionable condition of well bores (open holes shot with nitroglycerine). (4) The nearness of the injection interval to an overlying gas reservoir. The operation of the pilot and unit, performance to date under water injection, and related topics are discussed in the following sections.