Enhanced recovery
As the industry accelerates carbon capture, use, and storage initiatives, modeling innovations for carbon-dioxide injection and enhanced oil recovery have become critical for optimizing recovery and ensuring secure storage. Recent studies highlight a shift toward data-driven and hybrid approaches that combine computational efficiency with operational practicality.
Operators are turning to new gas-lift and nanoparticle-fluid technologies to drive up production rates.
This paper addresses the difficulty in adjusting late-stage production in waterflooded reservoirs and proposes an integrated well-network-design mode for carbon-dioxide enhanced oil recovery and storage.
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In my previous features, I discussed the challenges facing carbon dioxide (CO2), both technical and economic. By far the biggest use of CO2 is in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In this feature, the focus is on overcoming the biggest challenges facing CO2 EOR—gravity override and mobility. -
The evolution of horizontal drilling and multistage completions has changed matrix stimulation from the “more acid, better result” belief to effective lateral distribution and deeper penetration with less acid.
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CO2 injection is a successful EOR technology that has been deployed extensively in the Permian Basin. Further expansion of CO2 EOR has been limited by the availability of affordable CO2 rather than the existence of suitable target reservoirs. This situation may be about to change.
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A horizontal-steam-injection pilot project has been under way for the last 4 years in the Kern River heavy-oil field in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California.
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While the floating liquefied-natural-gas (FLNG) option initially looked promising, high capital expenditure and very high operational expense (OPEX) have limited its potential application, with four potential FLNG projects being canceled in Australasia in the last 2 years.
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Production from an offshore Angola field has been decreasing because of subsea pressure declines amid water-cut increases and limited gas compressor capacity. The development process leading to the selection of high-boosting multiphase pumps is described.
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Experimentation reveals that swellable nanogels increase their size faster than expected or produce aggregation leading to serious blocking problems at the sandface. This paper studies if the addition of a surfactant can help improve injectivity.
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Scientists at Locus Bio-Energy Solutions have created a series of nontoxic microbial-based products that substantially increase oil production.
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Progress in chemical EOR, from polymer to alkaline/surfactant/polymer, has been significant. Not only are there new chemicals with improved recovery capabilities, but also the cost of the chemicals is being reduced continuously. All those factors led to more operators using chemical EOR.
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In the complete paper, three stages of review have been combined to find out the applicability of the most-feasible improved-oil-recovery (IOR) methods in North American unconventional reservoirs.
