CBE 555: Chemical EngineeringConnections:

Impact of Chemical Engineering on the

Outside World

Tertiary Oil Recovery

Steve Ng Kim Hoong

16 October 2007
 Outline of This
Presentation
• Reasons for supporting tertiary oil recovery
• Primary Oil Recovery
• Secondary Oil Recovery
• Tertiary Oil Recovery
- Thermal Processes
- Miscible Processes
- Chemical Processes
- Biological Processes
 Why are we doing this??
 $86 per barrel of crude oil
 Primary oil recovery – can only recover 10
percent of a reservoir’s original oil in place
 Secondary oil recovery – 20 to 40 percent
 Tertiary oil recovery – 30 to 60 percent
 Undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the
ground total more than 430 billion barrels.
 Primary Oil Recovery
• The initial stage of
producing oil from a
reservoir
• Use natural forces such
as
- expansion of oil, gas or
both
- displacement by
naturally pressurized
water
- drainage from a reservoir
in high elevation to a well
in lower elevation
- artificial techniques
(pumps)
Secondary Oil Recovery
• Injection of fluids in a
series of wells to
force oil into another
series of wells
(essentially
augmenting the
natural forces used in
primary methods)
• Waterflooding
 Thermal Processes
• Viscosity is a measure of a liquid’s ability
to flow
• High viscosity of oil makes it difficult to
flow
• Reduce the viscosity with high
temperature
• Steam Injection
- Cyclic steam injection
- Steam drive
 Cyclic Steam Injection
• High pressure of steam (or
steam and hot water) injected
into well for days/weeks
• Injection is stopped and the
reservoir is “soaked”
• Well is then allowed to
backflow to surface
• Condensed steam/ hot water
vaporizes to drive oil out
• When production is low,
process is repeated
• “Huff and Puff” method
Steam Drive
• “Steam flooding”
• Same method as water
flooding
• Continuous injection of
steam (or steam and hot
water)
• A reservoir is developed
with interlocking patterns
of injection and
production wells
• Series of zones
developed as the fluids
move from injection wells
to production wells
 Miscible Processes
• Injected fluid dissolves the oil that it contacts
• Variety of fluid:
- Alcohol
- Carbon dioxide
- Petroleum hydrocarbons (propane, propane-butane)
- Petroleum gasses (ethane, propane, butane, pentane)
• Fluid selectivity depends on the type of reservoir and
crude oil
• Expensive fluid (supplementary process to recover fluid
or use it sparingly)
• “Slug” – 5% to 50% of reservoir volume pushed through
by gas/water brine or chemically treated brine
 CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery
• All the petroleum hydrocarbons are expensive (not viable in economic sense)
• CO2 is cheap and widely available (mostly use natural CO2 deposits)
• Complete mixing depends on reservoir temperature, pressure, chemical nature and
density of oil
• Generally, it’s deeper than 1200m and oil lighter than 220 API
• CO2 is stable in supercritical state (6.9 MPa and 310C)
• Injected CO2 will diminish the interfacial tension between itself and the crude oil
 Chemical Processes
• Involved the usage of surfactant/polymer,
polymer, alkaline flooding
• Surfactant/polymer flooding:
- microemulsion/micellar flooding
- detergent-like material injected to modify
the oil interactions with its surroundings
- emulsify/partly dissolve oil
- high cost, small volume
• Polymer flooding
- a chemically augmented waterflood
- polyacrylamides/polysaccharides
- increase effectiveness of water in displacing oil
• Alkaline flooding
- sodium hydroxide, sodium silicate, sodium
carbonate
- react with constituents in the crude oil or
rock/crude oil interface
- detergent-like material to reduce the ability of
the formation to retain oil
 Biological Processes
• Utilize microbes to enhance oil recovery
• Occupy pore spaces to release trapped oil and reduce water cut
• Microbial response:
- larger
- shrink
- oleophilic
- attach and surround oil droplets
- deform droplets to form smaller droplets
- smaller droplets able to escape pore spaces
- byproduct of metabolism (CO2 and biomass)
- biosurfactants (slimy substances – exopolysaccharides)
- Xanthomans campestris bacteria (Xantan)
• Reservoir response:
- microbes attached to water and oil droplets move faster through high permeable
sections of the field (thief zones). This combination and fast flow creates a natural
emulsion only in the thief zones.
- thief zones are temporarily blocked
- water is diverted to unswept areas of the field, thus increasing sweeping efficiency
 Case Study:
Beatrice Field, North Sea, England
• The Beatrice Field is in a steep North Sea
production decline
• Scheduled to be abandoned in 1995-96
• Applied the microbial enhanced oil
recovery (Titan Process) from 1992-95
• Oil production scheduled to decline to
5000 bopd (now producing 12000 bopd)
• 5.5 million barrels of excess oil was
produced
 REFERENCES
• http://www.titanoilrecovery.com/pdfs/TitanBrochure.pdf
• http://www.biobasics.gc.ca/english/View.asp?x=793
• http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/eor/index.h
tml
• Enhanced Oil Recovery Potential in the United States,
Congress of the United States, Office of Technology
Assessment, January 1978, #PB-276594
• Enhanced Oil Recovery Scoping Study, A. Amamath,
1999
THANK YOU!!