Enhanced Oil Recovery

Summary: Part 1
• EOR Overview
• Mobility Controlled & Chemical Processes
• Miscible & Thermal Processes

Reference: Enhanced Oil Recovery; Don W. Green, G. Paul Willhite; Publisher: Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
EOR Overview
• The oil produced by EOR processes compete with the cost of oil • Residual oil sat followed displacement must be low relative to
production from conventional sources. waterfloffing to justify economic attractiveness of an EOR process
• Primary: HC is displaced by naturally existing in reservoir energy • Overall displacement efficiency is product of macroscopic and
• Solution gas drive microscopic displacement efficiencies
• Gas cap drive
• Natural waterdrive
• Macroscopic – sweep efficiency – how effectively displacing fluid
sweeps out the volume of a reservoir, both areally and vertically as
• Fluid and rock expansion well as how effectively the discplcing fluid moves discplaced oil
• Gravity drainage toward production wells.
• Secondary: HC is displaced by injection of water or gas • Typical waterflood RF is about 1/3 (large portion of reservoir may be
• waterflooding, not contacted by injected fluid – oil has not ben displaced from the
• pressure maintenance, region to production wells)
• gas injection • EOR process improve both macroscopic and microscopic
• Tertiary: injection of miscible gases, liquid chemicals, thermal displacement efficiency
energy: • Reservoir geology (heterogeneity) is important factor in macroscopic
• miscible gases (oil swelling, viscosity reduction, etc.) displacement efficiency
• chemicals,
• thermal energy
• If density of injected fluid is different from reservoir fluid, gravity
segregation occur which decrease sweep efficiency thus updip or
• Injected fluids interact with reservoir rock/oil system to create downdip injection is to be applied to decrease the effects
faforable for oil recovery conditions: lower IFT, oil swelling, oil • However there are some loss of primary slug because of adsorption
viscosity reduction, wettability modfications, favorable phase and mixing
behavior
• EOR process often involve the injection of more then 1 fluid: • Thus major consideration in the design of EOR is size of fluid ijected
relativiely small volume of expensive chemical (primary slug) to and their unit cost. Another consideration is the ease of handling an
mobilize oil; primary slug is displaced with a larger volume of EOR fluid and its general compatibility eith physical
relatively inexpensive chemical (secondary slug) injection/production system (highly toxic or corrosive fluids)

Reference: Enhanced Oil Recovery; Don W. Green, G. Paul Willhite; Publisher: Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
EOR Overview
• Geologic factor is key in success of EOR. Process that • 5 categories of EOR:
are well understood in lab environment may fail when • Mobility control (improve Ev)
implemented in the reservoir. • Chemical (improve Ed; IFT reduction, phase behavior modification)
• Miscible (composition alteration; phase behavior modification)
• The implementation and success or failure of an EOR • Thermal (thermal energy injection; oil viscosity reductionphase behavior)
process are always affected by reservoir geology and • Other (microbial, etc.)
heterogeneities.
• Screening criteria for process applicability is to be used
• Geologic factor may lead to unexpected losses of (reservoir and fluid properties); restrictions for the
chemicals or bypassing of fluids because of channeling application of the processes exist: for example sufficient
in high perm zones or fractures. depth to obtain miscibility, depth limitation for steamdrive
because of heat loss; salinity and temperature limitations for
• Fluid movement may be very no uniform because of chemical processes to design stable surfactant/polymer
variations in rock properties. systems
• Unexpected chemical adsorption may occur causing
deterioration of slug
• Factors of this type, unless properly identified and
understood before will likely cause a project failure
• Thus connectivity is to be understand before
implementation of EOR (well to well tracer tests, PTA,
seismic surveys)

Reference: Enhanced Oil Recovery; Don W. Green, G. Paul Willhite; Publisher: Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
Mobility Controlled & Chemical Processes
Mobility Controlled Processes
• Objective: improve mobility ratio. The purpose is to develop
a more uniform volumetric sweep to overcome unfavorable
of conventional waterflood or geological heterogeneities
• Widely applied mobility-control process is the polymer-
augmented waterflood.
• Slugs with decreasing polymer concentration are applied
• Vertical, deviated well may penetrate multiple reservoirs and cheaper
• Horizontal well may be applied for low drainage zones, oil rims, etc.
• Mobility affect by two ways: viscosity increase, polymer
adsorption on porous media thus effective permeability for
water reduce
• Polymer flooding improve primarily macroscopic efficiency
rather than microscopic. Process affected by previous
waterflood. If previous waterflood was successful, efficiency
of polymer-augmented flood will be minimal
• Other processes exist: application of foams, rel perm
alteration, or permeability blockage in high k zones. Also
mobility controlled process are used with other EOR
methods to improve overall process efficiency
Reference: Enhanced Oil Recovery; Don W. Green, G. Paul Willhite; Publisher: Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
Chemical Processes
• Objective: Reduction of IFT
• Injection of specific liquid chemicals that effectively displace oil
because of their phase-behavior properties, which result in
decreasing of IFT between displacing liquid and oil
• Surfactant-polymer process
• Primary displacing slug: micellar solution: surfactant slug is very
small (10% PV) – reduction of residual oil
• Mobility buffer – polymer solution (1 PV) – injected to displace
micellar solution effectively
• Discovery of reduced sand channel size
• Thus both Ev and Ed increase
• Expensive and complex technologically
• Chemical losses can be severe: adsorption, trapping,
fingering
• Other type: alkaline flooding (generate surfactant in situ
by reacting with certain oil components)
Miscible and Thermal Processes
Miscible Processes
Thermal Processes
• Objective: displace oil that is miscible with oil
• Objective: Viscosity reduction, steam flashing, oil swelling,
• Two main variations steam stripping
• First contact miscible (FCM) the injected fluid is directly miscible with • Categories
reservoir oil in condition of P, T
• Small size of HC fluid (LPG) slug (10 – 15 % of PV) is displaced by larger volume of less
• Hot waterfloods (limited success, rarely used)
expensive gas (dry gas) (in some cases water can be used). Miscibility between primary and
secondary slugs is preferable
• Steam processes
• cyclic steam stimulation (huff and puff, steam soak) (single well method)
• Multiple contact miscible process (MCM). Injected fluid is not • Huff (Injection, days - weeks), soak (suit-in, days), puff (production phase, weeks - months)
miscible with reservoir oil on first contact. Mass transfer of certain periods

components happen and then in-situ miscibility happen • steamdrive

• For example - CO2 injection – through multiple contacts, intermediate and higher molecular • In-situ combustion
weight HC components are extracted into CO2 rich phase. Under proper conditions, this CO2
rich phase will reach composition which is miscible with original reservoir oil. Then miscible
and near miscible conditions exist at the displacing front interface. CO2 volume (25 % PV) • Applied for low API gravity oils
• Other MCM gases: dry gas, N2, flue gases – but these gases require much higher pressure to
achieve miscibility compared to CO2; thus can be applied in deeper reservoirs to prevent
fracing (0.6 psi/ft of depth)
• Major problems: gravity segregation of steam,
• Inject HC rich in propane and ethane- they condense in oil phase, enriching the oil with mobility control in steamdrive , heat losses,
lighter components – become miscible with injected fluid (in situ generation of miscibility)
equipment problems, pollutant emissions
• Problem: low viscous injected fluid and gravity • SAGD – steam assisted gravity drainage: set of parallel
segregation (unless dipping reservoirs): poor sweep + horizontal wells (upper well – inject steam, lower well
heterogeneity magnify the problem. Low sweep of gas produce oil)
injection is overcame by WAG (reduce rel perm of CO2)
• Finally: expensive injected fluids and limited supply in
some cases. Recycling may be used

Reference: Enhanced Oil Recovery; Don W. Green, G. Paul Willhite; Publisher: Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)