EOR Potential in the Middle East: Current and Future Trends

Abstract

The majority of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects are being executed in the the U.S., Canada, Venezuela, Indonesia and China. The volume of oil produced by EOR methods increased considerably from 1.2 MMBD in 1990 to 2.5 MMBD in 2006 (Sandrea and Sandrea 2007). Current total world oil production from EOR is approaching 3 MMBD representing about 3.5% of the daily global oil production (Sandrea and Sandrea 2007). Thermal and CO2 methods are the major contributors to EOR production, followed by hydrocarbon gas injection and chemical EOR. Other more esoteric methods, e.g., microbial, have only been field tested, without any significant quantities being produced on a commercial scale. In recent years, the number of EOR projects has increased with escalating oil prices. The number of EOR projects in the Middle East (ME) has also increased over the past decade. In some countries like Oman, there has been no choice but to implement EOR projects aggressively due to dwindling "easy oil." Other countries in the region have also started to think EOR, and are including them in their strategic short-, medium- and long-term development plans. Furthermore, there are many projects on the drawing board and appropriate screening studies and EOR pilots are being pursued region-wide. This paper reviews the current ME EOR projects from full-field development to field trials, including those on the drawing board. The option of advanced secondary recovery (ASR) — also known as improved oil recovery (IOR) — technologies before full-field deployment of EOR is also discussed. A case is made that they are a better first option before deployment of capital-intensive EOR projects. The ME’s general drive towards "ultimate" oil recovery — instead of immediate oil recovery — is highlighted in the context of EOR. Some of the enablers for EOR in the ME are also discussed in the paper. It highlights the opportunities and challenges of EOR specific to the region.

Review on Polymer Flooding: Rheology, Adsorption, Stability, and Field Applications of Various Polymer Systems

“…In Europe, Germany and Austria have plans to start polymer flooding. 18 In the Middle East, only Oman has applied for PF in the Marmul field 19 and cEOR implementation is in progress in the Sabiriyah Maudded oil field in North Kuwait. 20 It is expected that the first EOR from this carbonate reservoir will be obtained in 2016.…”

A database and workflow integration methodology for rapid evaluation and selection of Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) technologies for heavy oil fields

“…For example, thermal methods are capable of handling high crude oil viscosities at low depths, while gas injection methods are the most suitable choice for efficient oil production from deep reservoirs encountered in offshore fields [4,32,41] .…”

An Efficient Approach for the Determination of Oil Production Rate During the Water-flooding Recovery Method

“…Moreover, low salinity water flooding is emerging as one of the promising recovery methods (Vledder et al, 2010). Advances in technology will enable the maximization of water injection before developing advanced EOR methods (Al-Mutairi and Kokal, 2011). Some of the upscaling problems that may be important in an EOR method may have an unimportant impact on water flooding (Al-Mutairi and Kokal, 2011).…”

“…Some of the upscaling problems that may be important in an EOR method may have an unimportant impact on water flooding (Al-Mutairi and Kokal, 2011). One option to implement before advanced EOR techniques is smart water-flooding, which the idea is to inject water with an optimized composition into reservoir instead of any available water that may be planned in order to injection (Al-Mutairi and Kokal, 2011).…”