Oilfield chemistry

This year’s Acidizing feature presents three SPE conference papers that discuss an important battlefront of enhanced production—carbonate reservoirs, those plays whose heterogeneity, reactivity, and flow behavior pose challenges that remain comparatively little-understood, despite the industry’s intensified efforts to maximize their output.

This paper describes a case history in the UAE in which the cleanout of scale contaminated with naturally occurring radioactive material was conducted successfully.

Field examples from the Bakken Shale and Permian Basin illustrate the benefits of deploying polymer-coated and uncoated scale inhibitors in unconventional wells.

New strategies for protecting metal infrastructure emerge as operators fine-tune a corrosion threat screening process and develop a new method for tracking inhibitor effectiveness.

Interfacial tension keeps oil and water separate by resisting the mixing of their molecules at the surface. Learn how industry experts measure this force to diagnose fluid behavior.

This article is the second of a two-part series on produced-water management in the Gulf of Mexico and covers four themes: equipment, process configuration, operations, and effluent quality.

Field examples of operators using chemical restimulation to boost production in aging unconventional wells as an alternative to acid treatments.

This work investigates a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to acidification for sheen control.

The paper aims to address the challenges and opportunities in managing produced water and its contaminants in the petroleum industry.

The USGS has said up to 19 million tons of lithium resource is contained in the briny waters of the Smackover formation in Arkansas.