Visionary Idea Enhanced Oil Recovery & Oil Production
MD Eng Bernard Amour visionary idea Enhanced Oil Recovery & oil production:
Capabilities
THE Enhanced Oil Recovery or EOR is a series of technologies that are used to improve amount of oil that can be recovered from oil bearing formations.
Oil can be extracted in three phases:
1. primary recovery,
2. secondary recovery
3. And tertiary recovery.
During primary recovery, natural drive energy will be used, including natural aquifers influx, solution gas, gas cap, gravity drainage, or a combination of these drive energies.
Secondary recovery process involves injection of water or gases to maintain/raise reservoir pressure.
Primary and secondary recovery processes are known leaving two thirds of original oil in place (OOIP) underground. The remaining oil is located in non-accessible reservoir regions or pores due to capillary pressure and wettability issues.
Tertiary recovery process, also called EOR, is to recover the remaining oil using variation of injection agents.
EOR methods are classified into
A. Gas-based EOR (e.g., miscible and immiscible gases),
B. Water-based EOR (e.g., alkaline, surfactant, polymer, micellar, low salinity water, and combination of them),
C. Thermal-based EOR (e.g., steam, in-situ combustion, hot water, electrical heating), and other methods
The oil & Gas industry and academic have been developing and applying varied EOR technologies to improve oil recovery. Many successful stories have been reported via technical reports, technical papers, EOR surveys, and variety formats of project logs/records. These reported EOR stories provide valuable information regarding to the applicability of EOR methods for a particular reservoir type and reveal the influential factors on the ultimate oil recovery when a certain type of EOR is applied. Past experience could provide valuable analogous comparison and analysis for EOR selection of a future reservoir. That would save time, cut cost, and reduce the development cycle of a future mature oilfield.
By Mr. Mathiang Jalap Dongrin, Senior SPLM Activist and Political think tank.
