Enhanced Oil Recovery

Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR) is the implementation of various

techniques for increasing the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil
field. Enhanced oil recovery is also called improved oil recovery or tertiary recovery
(as opposed to primary and secondary recovery).

Techniques
There are three primary techniques of EOR: gas injection, thermal injection, and
chemical injection. Gas injection, which uses gases such as natural gas, nitrogen,
or carbon dioxide (CO2), accounts for nearly 60 percent of EOR production in the United
States. Thermal injection, which involves the introduction of heat, accounts for 40
percent of EOR production in the United States, with most of it occurring in
California. Chemical injection, which can involve the use of long-chained molecules
called polymers to increase the effectiveness of water floods, accounts for about one
percent of EOR production in the United States. In 2013, a technique called Plasma-Pulse
technology was introduced into the United States from Russia. This technique can result
in another 50 percent of improvement in existing well production.

Gas Injection
Secondary production methods are employed to increase production by boosting
depleted pressure in a formation. As the oil or natural gas in a formation is produced,
the hydrocarbons remaining in the reservoir may become trapped because the pressure
in the formation has lessened, making production either slow dramatically or stop
altogether.

Gas Injection & Production

A form of secondary production, gas injection is used on a well to enhance waning
pressure within the formation. Systematically spread throughout the field, gas-injection
wells are used to inject gas and effectively sweep the formation for remaining
petroleum, boosting production.
Somewhat similar to water injection, or water flooding, gas injection is a pressure
maintenance program that can be employed on a reservoir at the start of the production
process or introduced after production has already started to lessen. Here, gas is
injected into the gas cap of the formation, whereas in water injection, the water is
injected directly into the production zone.

Cycling In A Natural Gas Reservoir

Sometimes known as cycling, gas injection can entail re-injection of produced natural
gas. In this instance, as the pressure drops in a natural gas field, the condensate
separates from the dry gas in the reservoir. The condensate liquids block the pores
within the reservoir, making extraction practically impossible.
Cycling is used to prevent the condensate from separating from the natural gas in the
reservoir. In this process, the natural gas liquids (condensate) are stripped from the gas
on the surface after it has been produced from the reservoir, and the dry gas is then re-

injected into the reservoir through injection wells. Again, this helps to maintain pressure
in the reservoir while also preventing the separation within the hydrocarbon.

Natural Gas Disposal Solution

Additionally, gas injection can serve as an economical way to dispose of uneconomical
gas production on an oil reservoir. While in the past, low levels of natural gas that were
produced from oil fields were flared or burned off, that practice is discouraged in some
countries and against the law in others.

Flaring
Now, the low levels of natural gas that are produced from prolific oil fields are reinjected into the formation as form of disposal, as well as pressure maintenance. Here,
produced wet gas from oil fields are stripped of their natural gas liquids, compressed
and pumped into an injection well.
If the oil field is highly saturated, the natural gas is injected in the free gas cap; but if the
oil field is under-saturated, the gas is injected directly into the oil reservoir.

Gas Injection, Gas Lift & Gas Miscible

Process
Although the terms are sometimes interchanged, gas injection and gas lift are two
separate processes that are used to increase production. While gas injection is a
secondary production method, gas lift is a type of artificial lift.
Artificial lift is another way to increase production from a well by increasing pressure
within the reservoir. The main types of artificial lift include gas lift and pumping
systems, such as beam pumps, hydraulic pumps and electric submersible pumps.
While gas injection is achieved by injecting gas through its own injection well, gas lift
occurs through the production wells. In gas lift, compressed gas is injected down the
casing tubing annulus of a production well, entering the well at numerous entry points
called gas-lift valves. As the gas enters the tubing at these different stages, it forms

bubbles, lightens the fluids and lowers the pressure, thus increasing the production rate
of the well.
Furthermore, a type of EOR employed on a well in the tertiary production process, a gas
miscible process can be used to increase production. The difference in this recovery
method is that the gases introduced into the reservoir are not naturally occurring. In a
gas miscible process, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and LPG are injected into the reservoir.

Pioneering expertise in thermal

recovery
Total began researching the complexities of thermal recovery as early as the 1970s. Our
experience has been enriched by feedback from numerous pilot projects. Today, that
knowledge is being applied to unlock full value from the Steam-Assisted Gravity
Drainage (SAGD) process implemented in the Surmont Project, in Canada.

Significant Experience with Steam

Injection
Through our first field trials of thermal production in the 1970s, both as operator or
partner, we have gained solid experience with production methods applicable to
unconventional resources. Historically, efforts focused initially on the two processes
considered most promising at the time.
Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) or Huff & Puff

This is the original process. It is based on a single vertical well that is used first to inject
the steam and then to pump the bitumen to the surface. Between these two phases, a
soaking period allows the steam to diffuse through the reservoir; the heat lowers the
viscosity of the bitumen so it can be recovered.
Steam Drive

Steam is injected continuously via a vertical injection well. Oil is produced via vertical
production wells located about 100 meters away. The oil is fluidized by a steam front,
which pushes it toward the production wells.
Through these early R&D investments, we have been able to develop a solid body of
scientific and technological expertise in steam injection techniques, particularly with
respect to:

The dynamic effects of steam: reduction of fluid viscosity due to the rise in temperature,
thermal expansion of fluids and rock, modification of flow equations, etc.

The evaluation and prediction of the complex geomechanical effects of steam injections,
such as stresses and strains in the reservoir.

The operability of processes, especially in terms of well architectures and completions.

The recovery efficiency of processes.

Chemical injection.
The injection of various chemicals, usually as dilute solutions, have been used to aid
mobility and the reduction in surface tension. Injection of alkaline or caustic solutions
into reservoirs with oil that has organic acids naturally occurring in the oil will result in
the production of soap that may lower the interfacial tension enough to increase
production. Injection of a dilute solution of a water-soluble polymer to increase the
viscosity of the injected water can increase the amount of oil recovered in some
formations. Dilute solutions of surfactants such as petroleum sulfonates
or biosurfactants such as rhamnolipids may be injected to lower the interfacial
tension or capillary pressure that impedes oil droplets from moving through a reservoir.
Special formulations of oil, water and surfactant, microemulsions, can be particularly
effective in this. Application of these methods is usually limited by the cost of the
chemicals and their adsorption and loss onto the rock of the oil containing formation. In
all of these methods the chemicals are injected into several wells and the production
occurs in other nearby wells.

Polymer flooding
Polymer flooding consists in mixing long chain polymer molecules with the injected
water in order to increase the water viscosity. This method improves the vertical and
areal sweep efficiency as a consequence of improving the water/oil Mobility ratio.
Surfactants may be used in conjunction with polymers; They decrease the surface
tension between the oil and water. This reduces the residual oil saturation and improves
the macroscopic efficiency of the process.
Primary surfactants usually have co-surfactants, activity boosters, and co-solvents
added to them to improve stability of the formulation.
Caustic flooding is the addition of sodium hydroxide to injection water. It does this by
lowering the surface tension, reversing the rock wettability, emulsification of the oil,
mobilization of the oil and helps in drawing the oil out of the rock.

Microbial injection.
Microbial injection is part of microbial enhanced oil recovery and is rarely used because
of its higher cost and because the developments is not widely accepted.
These microbesfunction either by partially digesting long hydrocarbon molecules, by
generating biosurfactants, or by emitting carbon dioxide (which then functions as
described in Gas injection above).

Three approaches have been used to achieve microbial injection. In the first approach,
bacterial cultures mixed with a food source (a carbohydrate such as molasses is
commonly used) are injected into the oil field. In the second approach, used since 1985,
nutrients are injected into the ground to nurture existing microbial bodies; these
nutrients cause the bacteria to increase production of the natural surfactants they
normally use to metabolize crude oil underground. After the injected nutrients are
consumed, the microbes go into near-shutdown mode, their exteriors
become hydrophilic, and they migrate to the oil-water interface area, where they cause
oil droplets to form from the larger oil mass, making the droplets more likely to migrate
to the wellhead. This approach has been used in oilfields near the Four Corners and in
the Beverly Hills Oil Field in Beverly Hills, California.
The third approach is used to address the problem of paraffin wax components of the
crude oil, which tend to precipitate as the crude flows to the surface, since the Earth's
surface is considerably cooler than the petroleum deposits (a temperature drop of 9-1014 C per thousand feet of depth is usual).

Liquid carbon dioxide super fluids

Carbon dioxide is particularly effective in reservoirs deeper than 2,000 ft., where
CO2 will be in a supercritical state. In high pressure applications with lighter oils, CO2 is
miscible with the oil, with resultant swelling of the oil, and reduction in viscosity, and
possibly also with a reduction in the surface tension with the reservoir rock. In the case
of low pressure reservoirs or heavy oils, CO2 will form an immiscible fluid, or will only
partially mix with the oil. Some oil swelling may occur, and oil viscosity can still be
significantly reduced.
In these applications, between one-half and two-thirds of the injected CO2 returns with
the produced oil and is usually re-injected into the reservoir to minimize operating
costs. The remainder is trapped in the oil reservoir by various means. Carbon Dioxide as
a solvent has the benefit of being more economical than other similarly miscible fluids
such aspropane and butane.

Resources
1:- http://energy.gov/fe/science-innovation/oil-gas-research/enhanced-oil-recovery
2:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery
3:- http://www.rigzone.com/training/insight.asp?insight_id=345&c_id=4
4:- http://www.total.com/en/energies-expertise/oil-gas/explorationproduction/strategic-sectors/heavy-oil/expertise/pioneering-expertise-thermalrecovery
5:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection