Enhanced recovery
SPE Journal is seeking submissions for a special issue on sustainable enhanced oil recovery (EOR), highlighting innovations that boost oil recovery while reducing CO2 emissions and environmental impact. The Call for Papers opens on 15 October 2026.
By integrating experimental and mathematical modeling approaches, this work aims to advance the understanding of sand-detachment dynamics and formation instability under varying saturation conditions.
As Egypt’s largest oil and gas investor, Eni is ramping up its 2026–2027 drilling campaign with new investments cross the Mediterranean offshore, Nile Delta, Western Desert, and offshore Sinai to strengthen the country’s role as a regional gas and LNG export hub.
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The polymer-injection project in the Dalia field, one of the main fields of Block 17 in deepwater Angola, represents a world first for both surface and subsurface aspects.
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The Loma Alta Sur (LAS) field is a multilayer fluvial sandstone reservoir in the Neuquén basin of Argentina. Colloidal-dispersion-gel injection was considered a viable strategy to improve oil recovery in the field after early water breakthrough.
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Since 2006, production from gas injection has outstripped that from thermal, and is continuing to grow. Even though industry conditions remain tough, EOR is expected to be increasingly important in the future, with the possibility of further uptake of it linked to the climate-change agenda.
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Part of what makes DME an intriguing EOR technology is that it is soluble in both water and oil—with a preference for the latter. Shell’s plan is to add DME to the waterflooding stream to reach a concentration of about 16%, the upper limit of its dissolvability.
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The low recovery rates observed in most shale reservoirs has prompted a number of research projects to develop new enhanced oil recovery methods.
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With the recent drop in oil prices, operators are shifting to optimization of existing assets with minimal costs. For mature floods (water, chemical, and CO2), one low-cost optimization strategy is the intelligent adjustment of well-rate targets.
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Thermal steam stimulation is considered the most effective of current methods for heavy-oil production. However, the method has problems with low coverage by steam injection and decreased efficiency.
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The addition of a hydrocarbon condensate to steam operations in heavy-oil and bitumen reservoirs has emerged as a potential technology to improve not only oil recovery but also energy efficiency.
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Chemical enhanced-oil-recovery methods such as polymer and alkaline/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flooding are generally not considered suitable for oil viscosities greater than 100 or 200 cp.
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This article describes how the use of a biological EOR technique that applied produced water for reservoir flooding in a mature field led to rapid and substantial increases in oil production.