Oil Recovery Techniques - Enhanced Oil Recovery:

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is a more technologically advanced method for bringing production to surface than conventional methods of drilling. EOR is the final stage implemented in recovering all the crude oil possible from an oil reservoir. There are a number of techniques used for Enhanced Oil Recovery, each of which has variations on cost, efficiency and safety. From all these techniques, Surfactant EOR is receiving more attention in recent years.

Types of Enhanced Oil Recovery:

Oil production can be done into three phases: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary (or Enhanced Oil Recovery). Each phase requires an increasing amount of technology and energy to recover the oil. This increases the cost of well production.

Primary & Secondary Recovery

Primary recovery relies on naturally occurring pressure within the oil reservoir to drive oil to the surface. Secondary oil recovery initiates external energy to the oil reservoir when naturally occurring pressure is no longer sufficient to bring oil to the surface. It has done this by injecting water or by pumping compressed gasses into the reservoir.

The Global Need for Enhanced Oil Recovery:

As global demand for oil increases so its value and this makes more expensive oil extraction techniques more and more viable. In the long term, fossil fuels will need to be replaced by renewable energy sources. In the meantime, however, Enhanced Oil Recovery offers the only viable solution for retrieving anywhere up to 80% of the world’s oil reserves. When oil prices are low the general practice has been to extract somewhere between 20-50% of the oil through primary and secondary processes and then abandon it. Generally speaking establishing new wells has been a cheaper production method than EOR and that's why it has been slow to take off.

It is only now with improved bio-based surfactant systems that can be used at lower concentrations, the decline in new oil field discovery and rising oil prices that EOR is becoming economically viable.

Relieving the tension on global oil supply in the near and medium term is vital in securing the futures of developed and emerging economies. Whilst enhanced oil recovery is more costly, at a practical level it means the difference between expensive oil and no oil at all.

Enhanced Oil Recovery of various methods including:

Thermal EOR

Gas EOR

Chemical EOR

Hydrodynamic EOR

Combined EOR

With new advances in chemical research Chemical EOR  is fast gaining well-deserved attention as a long-term option for almost complete oil field extraction Recent developments in Chemical EOR have made even further developments making the processes safer, cleaner and more cost efficient than ever.

To share your research on oil recovery techniques join at our “World Congress on Oil, Gas and Petroleum Refinery” going to be held in Abu Dhabi, UAE during September 27-28, 2018.

For further information please visit: https://petroleumrefinery.conferenceseries.com/events-list/enhanced-oil-recovery

Contact:

Alessia Lee

Petroleum Refinery 2018 | Program Manager