Introduction

The present state of modern industrial development is characterized by the

consumption of enormous quantities of petroleum. Petroleum is being
utilized, not only in fuels and lubricants, but for manufacturing synthetic
fibers, plastics, drugs and thousands of other products. Therefore petroleum
demand continues to rise. During the past 40 years, a variety of enhanced
oil recovery methods have been developed and applied to mature and
mostly depleted oil reservoirs. These methods improve the oil efficiency of oil
recovery compared with primary and secondary oil methods. In the US, EOR
demand is increasing and thus developments are being made in this area.
The primary importance of these techniques is to force oil into the wellhead
where it can be pumped to the surface. Oil production old wells are
naturally decline from year to year as much as 15% of total production. But
with the various methods in an attempt to optimize the fields such as
Enhanced Oil Recovery, the decline can be reduced to the level 6.7% per
year.

Stages of Oil Recovery

There are three stages for the oil recovery from the reservoirs.
Primary Recovery
In this process, oil is forced out of the petroleum reservoir by existing natural
pressure of the trapped fluids in the reservoir. The efficiency of oil
displacement is primary oil recovery process depends mainly on existing
natural pressure in the reservoir.

Secondary Recovery
In this process, the reservoir is subjected to water flooding or gas injection
to maintain a pressure that continues to move oil to the surface.
Enhanced Oil Recovery
Enhanced Oil Recovery, also known as Tertiary Recovery, introduces fluids
that reduce viscosity and improve flow.

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Enhanced Oil Recovery 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 oil recovery or tertiary recovery.
Tertiary Recovery (EOR) enables producers to extract up to over half of a
reservoirs original oil content, depending on the reservoir and the EOR

process applied. These methods improve the sweep efficiency in the

reservoir by use of injectants that can reduce the remaining oil saturation
below the level achieved by conventional injection methods. EOR is to
reduce the residual oil saturation and to improve the sweep efficiency in all
directions.

Methods of Enhanced Oil Recovery

Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery
Injection of steam has historically been the most widely applied EOR method.
Heat from steam or hot water dramatically reduces the viscosity of viscous
oils, making it flow more readily. There are many variations for this process
including cyclic steam injection (huff n 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), and
hot water injection. Depending on the way in which the heat is generated in
the reservoir, the thermal processes can be divided into two categories:
In-situ combustion
Steam injection

Miscible Enhanced Oil Recovery

This method usually employs supercritical CO2 to displace oil from a depleted
oil reservoir with suitable characteristics (typically containing light oils).
Through changes in pressure and temperature, carbon dioxide can form a
gas, liquid, solid, or supercritical fluid. CO2, nitrogen, hydrocarbon gases,
and flue gases have also been injected to immiscibly displace oil.
Carbon dioxide having suitable characteristics injected into a depleted oil
recovery can achieve EOR by two processes
Miscible displacement (most efficient and most common in EOR
projects)
Immiscible displacement (it is important where conditions are not
suitable for miscible displacement )

Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery

The chemical processes refer to those processes in which additional nonnatural components
are added to the fluids in order to stimulate the mobility between the both
the displacing and
displaced fluid.
Chemical flooding processes can be divided into three main categories:
Surfactant flooding
Polymer flooding
Caustic flooding

Conclusion
Thermal processes have been used extensively for the displacement of
heavy oils, whereas chemical and miscible displacement processes have
been employed for the recovery of light oils. Among the various processes
for oil recovery, thermal processes have least uncertainty, and offer a
promising approach for about 70% of the worlds enhanced oil recovery
production.