University of Mosul College of Petroleum & Mining Engineering Department of Petroleum & Refining Engineering

University of Mosul
College of Petroleum & Mining Engineering
Department of Petroleum & Refining Engineering
Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes

Fourth Year
Lecture 7
Dr. Muneef Mahjoob Mohammed
2019 – 2020
Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes 2019 – 2020 Dr. Muneef Mahjoob Mohammed
Tertiary or Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes
The oil recovered by both primary and secondary processes ranges from 20 % to 50 %
depending on oil and reservoir properties.
Table 1 summarize the oil recovery efficiencies from primary and secondary recovery
processes obtained from production data from several reservoirs in the United States.
As Table 1 shows after primary and secondary oil recovery, a significant amount of oil is left
behind in the reservoir.
Table 1: Oil Recovery Efficiencies as % of OOIP from primary and secondary recovery.
Enhanced oil recovery processes include all methods that use external sources of energy and/or
materials to recover oil that cannot be produced, economically by conventional means.
EOR refers to the recovery of oil through the injection of fluids and energy not normally present
in an oil reservoir to improve oil recovery. The goal of enhanced oil recovery processes is to
recover at least a part of the remaining oil in place.
The general mechanism of oil recovery is movement of the hydrocarbons to production wells
due to a pressure difference between the reservoir and the production wells. Thus, the
objectives of the enhanced oil recovery are to increase the pressure difference between the
reservoir and production wells, or to increase the mobility of the oil by reduction of the oil
viscosity or decrease of the interfacial tension between the displacing fluids and oil.
1
The injected fluids must accomplish several objectives as follows:
a- Increase the natural energy in the reservoir.
b- Interact with the reservoir rock/oil system to create conditions favourable for residual oil
recovery that includes among others:
● Reduction of the interfacial tension between the displacing fluid and oil.
● Reduce capillary forces.
● Increase the drive water viscosity.
● Oil viscosity reduction.
The ultimate goal of EOR processes is to increase the overall oil displacement efficiency, which
is a function of microscopic and macroscopic displacement efficiency.
Enhanced oil recovery processes have as their objective the increase of recovery from
reservoirs depleted by secondary recovery with waterflooding or gas injection. The EOR
processes can be divided into three major categories: (1) chemical, (2) thermal, and (3)
miscible. The major enhanced oil displacement processes can be further subdivided into
various categories as illustrated in Fig. 2. 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.
Chemical flooding processes can be divided into three main categories: (1) surfactant flooding,
(2) polymer flooding, and (3) caustic flooding. The mechanism of oil displacement by
surfactant and caustic flooding is based on the formation of ultra-low interfacial tension,
whereas polymer flooding alone, or injection of surfactant followed by polymer flooding,
results in controlling the mobility which in turn enhances oil recovery.
2
Figure 2: Various EOR processes.
When petroleum reservoirs contain a low-gravity (less than 20o API), high viscosity oil and
have a high porosity, secondary recovery methods are not effective for displacement of oil. For
such reservoirs, thermal processes have received the most attention. The injection of steam
reduces the oil viscosity which causes an increase in the oil mobility. Depending on the way in
the heat is generated in the reservoir, the thermal processes can be divided into three categories:
(1) in-situ combustion, (2) steam or hot water injection, and (3) steam stimulation or cyclic
steam injection.
The miscible displacement process involves the injection of a solvent such as alcohol, refined
hydrocarbons, condensed hydrocarbon gases, liquefied petroleum gases, or carbon dioxide,
which can dissolve in the reservoir oil. The injected solvent reduced the capillary forces that
cause oil retention in the pore spaces of the reservoir rocks. In this process, the injected solvent
slug is followed by the injection of a liquid or gas to force the solvent-oil mixture out. The
miscible displacement process can be subdivided into: (1) the miscible solvent process; (2) the
carbon dioxide process; and (3) the inert gas process.
3
1- Chemical methods:
Chemical methods of enhanced oil recovery are characterised by the addition of chemical to
water in order to generate fluid properties or interfacial conditions that are more favourable for
oil displacement. This can be done in many ways:
a- Increasing water viscosity.
b- Decreasing the relative permeability to water.
c- Increasing the relative permeability to oil.
d- Decreasing the interfacial tension between the oil and water phases.
Chemical flooding is a generic term for injection processes that use special chemicals dissolved
in the injection water that lower the interfacial tension between the oil and water from an
original value of around 30 dynes/cm to 10-3 dynes/cm. At this low interfacial tension value,
it is possible to break up the oil into tiny droplets that can be drawn from the rock pores by
water.
The efficiency of the chemical flooding is a function of liquid viscosity, relative permeability,
interfacial tension, wettability, and capillary pressure. Even if all the oil is contacted by the
injected chemicals, some oil would still remain in the reservoir. This is due to the trapping of
oil droplets by capillary forces due to high interfacial tension between water and oil.
There are three main types of chemical flooding processes:
1- Polymer flooding
2- Surfactant flooding
3- Alkaline (caustic) flooding

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University of Mosul

College of Petroleum & Mining Engineering

Department of Petroleum & Refining Engineering

Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes

Dr. Muneef Mahjoob Mohammed

Tertiary or Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes

The injected fluids must accomplish several objectives as follows:

a- Increase the natural energy in the reservoir.

● Reduce capillary forces.

● Increase the drive water viscosity.

● Oil viscosity reduction.

Figure 2: Various EOR processes.

a- Increasing water viscosity.

b- Decreasing the relative permeability to water.

c- Increasing the relative permeability to oil.

There are three main types of chemical flooding processes:

3- Alkaline (caustic) flooding

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