Naskah

Assalamualaikum, Hello everyone , today is a beautiful day to explain about oil recovery generally, and I
am Lathifa rahma astuti want to share my knowledge about it. I hope that you will stay with me till the
end.

1.

Petroleum is naturally occurring, oily, AND flammable liquid. The unrefined petroleum is called
crude oil, can be in black, brownish, or amber. It is a mixture of hydrocarbons including carbon,
hydrogen, sulphur, nitrogen, oxygen, and metals that is formed million of years ago from animal
and plant remains deposited in sand and silt and pressurized by layers of sedimentary rock.

Petroleum can be classified as light, medium, and heavy oil. Light and medium oil can flow
naturally on the earth surface and commonly extracted from ground through vertical drilling and
pumping. While heavy oil has a thick consistency that is not easily flow, and sometimes
advanced technology is required to extract it
2.
Oil recovery can be classified as: (1) conventional oil, extracted from underground
reservoirs using traditional drilling and pumping methods. Conventional extraction also
known as primary and secondary phase oil recovery.

Unconventional oil or also known as enhanced oil recovery (tertiary recovery), cannot be
extracted using traditional drilling and pumping. Further extraction technique used to
recover heavier oil that cannot flow by its own.
Further explanation will be told later, so make sure to stay tune

3.

The production behaviour of giant oil fields starts with build-up period. During this stage,
wells are progressively brought on flow. Long plateau phase refers to production of a
giant field. the end of that stage has been used as the peak year. It means that plateau
stage is maintained a constant production rate. And after the plateau phase ends, the
decline rate, the average annual decrease in production is analysed.
4.

This is the simplify figure of oil and gas extraction steps. There are 7 steps that will be
explained right after this.
Preparing the rig site includes build aboveground infrastructure, pads, and access road, to
prepare the next step, drilling. Everything from traffic plans and designated access roads to noise
barrier and safety procedures is carefully planned and monitored from start to finish based on
state and local laws.

Drilling
Firstly, the drill rig is brought to the location and put together and build the infrastructure
necessary to unlock the oil and natural gas trapped more than a mile below the ground. A well is
drilled straight down into the ground beneath the pad. The first stage is to drill what is called the
surface hole down to a depth of 100 feet below the deepest known aquifer. A steel casing is then
cemented in place so there is no risk of polluting precious water aquifers.
After the long hole is drilled and reaching where oil and natural gas is trapped, the hole is
directionally steered to turn it horizontal and out.

Horizontal drilling minimizes the impact and scale of aboveground land disturbance by allowing
drillers to use only one drill pad for multiple wells instead of multiple pads having a single well
each, unlike vertical drilling.

Cementing and testing

Once the target is reached, the drill pipe is removed, and steel pipe is pushed to the bottom. This
well casing is cemented in place. Rigorous tests are performed to ensure the pipe is impermeable
before any production of natural gas or oil can occur.

Well completion
A perforating gun is lowered into the ground and fired into the rock layer in the deepest part of
the well, creating holes that connect the rock holding the oil and natural gas and the wellhead
before drillers can tap the oil and natural gas

Fracking
After the well is open, the oil and natural gas that has been trapped in the rock is unlocked.
Fracking fluid (99.5% sand and water and 0.5% chemical) is pumped with high pressure through
perforating hole to create cracks as thin as paper in the shale rock, freeing the oil and natural gas
that is trapped inside by using specialized instrument to monitor pressure and data from reservoir
in real time.
Production and fracking fluid recycling

Oil and natural gas flows from reservoir bore and fracturing fluid is then recovered and recycled
and used in other fracturing operations.
Well abandonment and land restoration

After all the recovered oil and natural gas has been produced, law requires that the well must be
permanently plugged, and the land is returned to the way it was before.

5. Okay, let’s go back to the classification of oil recovery

The first phase is primary recovery

In the primary oil recovery phase, oil be taken out from the well bore by natural pressure
of the reservoir and gravity. The natural motion is increased with the artificial lift
techniques such as pump. In this primary recovery, the range of oil extraction is 10-20%
from the oil available in the field
 The second phase is secondary recovery

In the secondary recovery, water is used that is well known as waterflooding technique, to
recover oil from field. In this technique, water or vapor is injected to replace oil and send it to the
well bore. In this secondary recovery, the range of oil extracted can be 10-30% from the
available oil in field

And last but not least is tertiary or enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
In this tertiary recovery or EOR techniques phase requires several additional methods that
sometimes expensive. However, through this EOR method, the range of oil extracted can be 30-
60% of a total oil in field (Nazar, et al., 2009). Oil extraction activities are greatly optimized by
this methods that requires some chemical techniques and find huge applicability when secondary
recovery method fails to improve reservoir productivity. The main mechanism of this tertiary or
EOR method is to change the viscosity of the heavy oil so it can increase the driving force to
make the oil is easily taken out.

As it seen, EOR method has so many classifications. Figure above is a simplified chart for some EOR
methods which is usually done to petroleum. Particularly, miscible and thermal methods can be
useful to change viscosity so that the mobility of oil trapped inside the rocks due to some
interfacial effect, with a combination of capillary forces and viscous force. As a result, more oil
can be taken out from pores.

Thank you for being with me this long, I am sorry if there is any mistake. That’s all from me,
wassalamualaikum