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Enhance Oil Recovery

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques can extract 30-60% or more of the original oil in a reservoir, compared to 20-40% for primary and secondary recovery. There are four main EOR methods: gas injection, chemical injection, microbial injection, and thermal methods. Gas injection, where gases like CO2 or natural gas are injected to reduce oil viscosity, is currently the most common approach. Chemical injection involves using alkaline, caustic or polymeric solutions to lower interfacial tensions between water and oil. Microbial injection, which is rarely used, works by microbes partially digesting hydrocarbons or producing biosurfactants to aid oil recovery.

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245 views

Enhance Oil Recovery

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques can extract 30-60% or more of the original oil in a reservoir, compared to 20-40% for primary and secondary recovery. There are four main EOR methods: gas injection, chemical injection, microbial injection, and thermal methods. Gas injection, where gases like CO2 or natural gas are injected to reduce oil viscosity, is currently the most common approach. Chemical injection involves using alkaline, caustic or polymeric solutions to lower interfacial tensions between water and oil. Microbial injection, which is rarely used, works by microbes partially digesting hydrocarbons or producing biosurfactants to aid oil recovery.

Uploaded by

Petro Man
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Enhance Oil Recovery

Definition
Enhanced Oil Recovery (abbreviated EOR) is a
generic term for techniques for increasing the amount of
crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field.

Enhanced oil recovery is also called improved or tertiary
Recovery (as opposed to primary and secondary
recovery).

Using EOR, 30-60 %, or more, of the reservoir's original
oil can be extracted, compared with 20-40% using
primary and secondary recovery.
Types of Enhance Oil Recovery Methods
Following are the methods of Enhance Oil Recovery,

1, Gas Injection
2, Chemical Injection
3, Microbial Injection
4, Thermal methods
Gas Injection
Gas re-injection is presently the most-commonly used approach to
enhanced recovery. this method sometimes aids recovery by
reducing the viscosity of the crude oil as the gas mixes with it.

Gases used include CO2, natural gas or nitrogen. Air cannot be
used to re-pressurize the reservoir because the oil will quickly catch
on fire.

In CO2 injection, more than half and up to two-thirds of
the injected CO2 returns with the produced oil and is
usually re-injected into the reservoir to minimize
operating costs. The remainder is trapped in the oil
reservoir by various means.
Chemical Injection
The injection of various chemicals, usually as dilute
solutions, have been used to improve oil recovery.


Injection of alkaline or caustic solutions into reservoirs
with oil that has organic acids naturally occurring in the
oil will result in the production of soap that may lower
the interfacial tension enough to increase production.

Polymers, Surfactants and Bio surfactants are added to
the water to lower the interfacial tension of crude oil,
that impedes a droplet of crude to flow.
Microbial Injection
Microorganisms are very diverse; they include bacteria,
fungi, archaea, and protists; microscopic plants (green
algae); and animals such as plankton and the planarian.

Microbial injection is part of microbial enhanced oil
recovery and is presently rarely used, both because of its
higher cost and because the developments in this field
are more recent than other techniques.

Strains of microbes have been both discovered and
developed (using gene mutation) which function either
by partially digesting long hydrocarbon molecules, by
generating biosurfactants.

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