Answers To Enhanced Oil

Recovery
Mourad Hosni

9/1/2010
Mourad.Hosni@hotmail.com
Mourad.Hosni@hotmail.com

1. What do you know about oil primary, secondary, and

tertiary recovery?
 Primary Recovery:1
Producing reserves are called “primary” when they are produced by
primary recovery methods using the natural energy inherent in the
reservoir. The driving energy may be derived from:
1- The liberation and expansion of dissolved gas
2- Expansion of the gas cap
3- Active aquifer
4- Gravity drainage
 Secondary Recovery: 2
it’s the 2nd stage of oil recovery; also called conventional recovery
methods, which involve the injection of gas, and/or water
[waterflooding] into the reservoir.
 Tertiary recovery:3
it’s the 3rd stage of oil recovery; also called enhanced/ improved
recovery. It involves the injection of gases, or chemical fluids and/or the
use of thermal energy

1
Applied Enhanced Oil Recovery, Aurel Carcoana, ch.2 pp 8-9
2
Same reference mentioned above
3
Enhanced Oil Recovery (SPE Textbook Series), Green & Willhite 1998. p1

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2. Define
 Sweep efficiency:4 A measure of the effectiveness of an enhanced
oil recovery process that depends on the volume of the
reservoir; contacted by the injected fluid.
 Tertiary recovery:5
it’s the 3rd stage of oil recovery; also called enhanced/ improved
recovery. It involves the injection of gases, or chemical fluids and/or the
use of thermal energy
 Water flooding:6
A method of secondary recovery in which water is injected into
the homogeneous reservoir formation to displace residual oil. The water
from injection wells physically sweeps the displaced oil to
adjacent production wells.
It’s also useful to maintain the reservoir pressure, and to dispose the
brine produced with the oil.
 Surfactant flooding:7
It’s defined as a tertiary recovery method [chemical], surface-active
agents adsorb or concentrate at fluid interface, they alter the interfacial
properties; in particular, they decrease the surface tension (ITF)
between oil and water
Surfactants consist of:
1- hydrocarbon portion [tail]
2- ionic portion [head]

 The capillary number:

it’s a dimensionless number, represents the relative effect

4
Schlumberger oil field glossary
5
Enhanced Oil Recovery (SPE Textbook Series), Green & Willhite 1998. p1
6
Latil M., Enhanced Oil Recovery ch.2 pp 35-38
7
Erle C. Donaldson, Enhanced Oil Recovery I, Fundamentals and Analyses, pp187-190

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of viscous forces and surface tension acting across an interface between

two immiscible8 liquids.

Nc=
Where;
N: capillary number
: is the displacing fluid viscosity
: Velocity
: interfacial tension between the displaced, and displacing fluids

 Low-tension polymer flooding

Co-injection of a low concentration surfactant and a biopolymer,
followed by a polymer buffer for mobility control, that reduces the
chemical consumption, and raises the oil recovery

8
Incapable of mixing

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3. Show schematically the mechanisms of oil trapping.

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4. Give a schematic drawing for oil production including the

water flooding?

5. The key to achieving good oil recovery is to attain a high

enough capillary number, why?
Because it’s experimentally shown that the residual oil saturation in the
reservoir is constant below a certain value of Nc [in the range 10-4 -10-5].
Above this critical value, the residual saturation decreases almost linearly
with log Nc.

6. How the capillary number can be increased?

a. By increasing the viscosity and/or velocity of injected fluid
b. decreasing the interfacial tension

Nc=

Where;
N: capillary number
: is the displacing fluid viscosity
: Velocity
: interfacial tension between the displaced, and displacing fluids

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7. How the surfactant can affect the capillary number?

Surfactants have the ability to reduce oil-water interfacial tension to

ultra-low values, consequently; the capillary number increases.

Nc=

Where;
N: capillary number
: is the displacing fluid viscosity
: Velocity
: interfacial tension between the displaced, and displacing fluids

8. What is the effect of temperature on the capillary number?

By raising the temperature, the interfacial tension between oil and

water decreases, consequently the capillary number increases sue to
the formula:

Nc=

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Where;
N: capillary number
: is the displacing fluid viscosity
: Velocity
: interfacial tension between the displaced, and displacing fluid

9. What are the main criteria that should be found in the

surfactant system used for oil recovery?
a. Should be hydrolytically stable for an extended period of time
under reservoir conditions.
b. Don’t precipitate in hard water.
c. Don’t adsorb extensively at mineral surfaces of the reservoir
d. Some other aspects should be considered, such as: cost, toxicity,
and biodegradability.

10.It is not recommended to use surfactant – cosurfactant

combinations particularly in offshore reservoirs. Discuss
in offshore reservoirs, the distance between injection and production
holes are long, so the formulations used should preferably contain as
few surface active components as possible, because mixtures of
different surfactant- co-surfactant combinations are less suitable since
they are likely to separate during their way through the porous rock.
In this aspect, the rock can be expected to act like a long
chromatography column.