EOR

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Technical Concepts In an effort to minimize their dependence on
imported oil, China is attempting to maximize the contribution their domestic oil reserves make to
their total oil supply. As such, a primary focus is on improving the performance of existing oil fields,
by using technical recovery methods, known as EOR, to access reserves that were previously
unattainable due to geology or expense. EOR is chiefly concerned with affecting the mobility of the
oil through the drilling process, late in the life span of the well. It primarily does this through the use
of injecting fluids in the drilling process. EOR processes can result in 30-60 per cent or more of the
reservoir’s original oil being extracted, compared to just 20-40 per cent using primary or secondary
recovery methods. Note: The volumetric sweep efficiency at any time is the fraction of the total
reservoir volume contacted by the injected fluid during the recovery. When using water,
consideration of the mobility of the fluids is an important factor when determining the area and
vertical sweep efficiencies. This would help to determine the mobility ratio. If M is less than one (1),
then oil is capable of travelling at a rate equivalent to the water. An increase in the viscosity of the
oil would mean that M would increase and this would lead to the injected fluid moving around the
oil. This would also make it harder for the oil to penetrate the pore. To improve this ratio, the
viscosity of the water has to be increased. When M is greater than one, the displacing fluid has
greater mobility than the displaced fluid. Also the position of the water injection and the flooding
patterns would go a long way to determining the recovery patterns. Another point to consider in oil
recovery is the position and orientation of the injection wells around the production well. As the
mobility ratio increases, the sweep efficiency decreases. Once a channel of water exists between the
injector and the producer, then little additional oil would be recovered. If permeability varies
vertically then an irregular vertical fluid front can develop and this is as a result of the differing
permeability and the mobility ratio. Displacement efficiency refers to the fraction of oil that is swept
from unit volume of reservoir upon injection. This depends on the mobility ratio, the wettability of
the rock and the pore geometry. The wettability is determined by whether or not the grains
preferentially absorb oil over water. Other Earlier EOR Methods Sino Australia Oil & Gas’ main
business is deploying its patented technology for directed water jet drilling technology. This
technology can be adapted to the needs of different types of geological conditions. In order to do so,
the technology must be re-engineered with theoretical research and on-site practical production
testing in order to promote the application of a large area of industrialization. As there are different
kinds of oil fields in the world, there are different EOR methods used to improve the long-term
drilling results. Essentially these can be determined in four basic methods: 1. Chemical Method 
Polymer flooding Polymer flooding is one of the most widely used EOR methods to retrieve oil left
behind after conventional recovery processes. It’s an augmented water flooding technique
introduced in the 1960’s, mainly used for heterogeneous reservoirs, to retrieve oil after areas in the
reservoir with high permeability have been highly water flooded. As explained by CNPC: “Polymer
flooding is a tertiary recovery method by adding high-molecular-weight polyacrylamide into injected
water, so as to increase the viscosity of fluid, improve volumetric sweep efficiency, and thereby
further increase the oil recovery factor. When oil is displaced by water, the oil/water mobility ratio is
so high that the injected water fingers through the reservoirs. By injecting polymer solution into
reservoirs, the oil/water mobility ratio can be much reduced, and the displacement front advances
evenly to sweep a larger volume. The viscoelasticity of polymer solution can help displace oil
remaining in m
Carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding is a process whereby carbon dioxide is injected into an oil
reservoir in order to increase output when extracting oil.

Figure 1. Carbon dioxide pressure-temperature phase diagram

When a reservoir’s pressure is depleted through primary and secondary production, carbon
dioxide flooding can be an ideal tertiary recovery method. It is particularly effective in reservoirs
deeper than 2,500 ft., where CO
2 will be in a supercritical state, with API oil gravity greater than 22–25° and remaining oil
saturation greater than 20%. Carbon dioxide flooding is not affected by the lithology of the
reservoir area, but simply by the reservoir porosity and permeability, so that it is viable in both
sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. By injecting CO2 into the reservoir, the viscosity of
any hydrocarbon will be reduced and hence will be easier to sweep to the production well.
As an oil field matures and production rates decline, there is growing incentive to intervene and
attempt to increase oil output utilizing tertiary recovery techniques (also termed improved
or enhanced oil recovery). Petroleum engineers assess available options for increasing well
productivity, options that include chemical injection, thermal/steam injection, and CO2 injection.
Based on data-gathering and computer simulations, the most optimal enhanced oil-recovery
technique to maximize well-productivity is determined. To increase the rate of oil production, the
pressure within the reservoir must be increased.

In CO2 flooding, the first step is injection of water into the reservoir, which will cause the reservoir
pressure to increase. Once the reservoir has sufficient pressure, the next step is to pump the
CO2 down through the same injection wells. The CO2 gas is forced into the reservoir to come into
contact with the oil. This creates a misciblezone that can be moved more easily to the production
well. Normally the CO2 injection is alternated with water injection and the water acts to sweep the
oil towards the production zone.
CO2 flooding is the second most common tertiary recovery technique and is used in facilities
around the world.[citation needed] In connection with greenhouse gas emissions and global warming,
CO2 flooding sequesters CO
2 underground and therefore offsets CO2 emissions elsewhere.

Carbon capture aims to mitigate the emission of CO2 by capturing it at the

point of combustion then storing it in geological reservoirs or applied
through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in a technology known as miscible
flooding, so reduce CO2 atmospheric emissions. Miscible CO2-EOR
employs supercritical CO2 to displace oil from a depleted oil reservoir.
CO2 improve oil recovery by dissolving in, swelling, and reducing the oil
viscosity. Hydrocarbon gases (natural gas and flue gas) used for miscible
oil displacement in some large reservoirs. These displacements may
simply amount to “pressure maintenance” in the reservoir. In such
flooding techniques, the minimum miscibility pressure determined through
multiple contact experiments and swelling test to determine the optimum
injection conditions.

CO2 concentration in atmosphere increases due to the industrial revolution that attributed to the
combustion of fossil fuels [1]. CO2 is responsible of 64% of environmental pollution [1], so there
is a dire need to mitigate its concentration to avoid global warming emissions. CO2 miscible
flooding in crude oil reservoirs is a currently successful technique to reduce its amount in the
atmosphere, in addition to increasing the mobility of the oil.

consequently, increase the reservoir productivity [2]. It is preferred other

than hydrocarbon gases since it does not only increase oil recovery but
also causes a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions [3]. Moreover, it is a
cheap technology as an ultimate long-term geologic storage solution for
CO2 owing to its economic productivity from incremental oil production
offsetting the cost of carbon sequestration, and exhibit high displacement
efficiency and the potential for environmental contamination decrease
through its disposal in the petroleum reservoir [1, 4]. This chapter aims to
provide basic technical information concerning enhanced oil recovery by
CO2 flooding.

2. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes

Owing to increased oil demand, improved oil recovery become a challenging task [3], since fossil
fuels are the dominant source of the global energy supply [2] and represent about 85% of energy
needs. Crude oil production occurs through three distinct phases [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. The first stage is
known as primary recovery, in which oil is recovered by natural reservoir energy including
expansion of rock, fluid and dissolved gases, gravity drainage, and aquifer influx, or combination
of these factors, which drive the hydrocarbon fluids from the reservoir to the wellbores.
Primary oil recoveries range between 5 and 20% [10] of the original oil-in-place (OOIP). As
reservoir pressure declines with the sustained production process, so the reservoir pressure
must be built-up by injecting either water or natural gas, which drive reservoir fluid to wellbore
[11]. This stage is known as secondary oil recovery, in which the recovered oil estimated to be in
the range of 20–40% of the OOIP [10]. At the end of secondary recovery, a significant amount of
residual oil remains in the reservoir and becomes the target for additional recovery using tertiary
recovery or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. EOR refers to the displacement of the
remaining oil in the reservoir through injection of materials not normally present in the reservoir
[10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. Generally, EOR processes comprise the following three categories:

2.1. Thermal EOR

Injection of steam has historically been the most widely applied EOR method. Heat from steam
or hot water dramatically reduces heavy oils viscosity, thus improving its flow. The process
involves cyclic steam injection (“huff and puff,” where steam is first injected, followed by oil
production from the same well); Continuous steam injection (where steam injected into wells
drives oil to separate production wells); hot water injection, and steam assisted gravity drainage
(SAGD) using horizontal wells. Another set of thermal methods include, in situ combustion or fire
flooding are currently implemented [18, 19, 20].

2.2. Miscible EOR

Miscible EOR employs supercritical CO2 to displace oil from a depleted oil reservoir.
CO2 improve oil recovery by dissolving in, swelling, and reducing the viscosity of the oil. CO2 is a
cheap injection source for increasing recovery factor by the rate of 1–2$/Mscf [21]. Most
CO2 flooding processes occur in United States [22]. Hydrocarbon gases (natural gas and flue
gas) in addition to compressed nitrogen used for miscible oil displacement in high deep
reservoirs. These displacements may simply amount to “pressure maintenance” in the reservoir
[23, 24, 25].

2.3. Chemical EOR

Chemical flooding was, up to 2000s, a less common EOR method than thermal and gas flooding,
but now, huge projects are retrieved. The chemical flooding processes involve the injection of
three kinds of chemicals; alkaline, surfactant and polymer (soluble and cross-linked polymers), in
addition to other chemicals such as foaming agents, acids and solvents [26] and/or combination
of alkaline-surfactant-polymer flooding (ASP) [27]
In the polymer flooding method, water-soluble polymers aimed to shut-off the high-permeability
areas of the reservoir and increase injected water viscosity to increase the swept areas in the
reservoir [28, 29] leading to a more efficient displacement of moderately viscous oils. Addition of
a surfactant to the polymer formulation may, under very specific circumstances, reduce oil–water
interfacial tension (IFT) and hence remobilizing the trapped oil [30], changing surface
wettability, so enhance the oil production. For some oils, alkaline may convert some naphthenic
acids within the oil to surfactants that increase oil recovery. The alkaline may also play a
beneficial role in reducing surfactant retention in the rock

3. Fundamentals and mechanism of CO2 flooding

Improvement of oil recovery occurs through different techniques, one of which is CO2 flooding in
low permeable and light-oil reservoirs [35, 36], as it can increase recovery factor from 10 to 20%
[37]. Moreover, it reduces atmospheric gas emissions through CO2 storage [38]. Gas miscible
flooding implies that the displacing gas is miscible with reservoir oil either at first contact or after
multiple contacts, which in turn improve the volumetric sweeping and displacement efficiencies
(Ev and Ed) respectively [39, 40
A transition zone will develop between the reservoir oil and displacing gas, where the miscibility
of the injected gas depend on reservoir pressure, temperature, and oil properties [41, 42].
CO2 miscible flooding comprises two mechanisms.