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Thermal EOR,
STeam Injection and Enhanced Oil
Recovery
Providing the Maximum Oil Production at the Least Cost "Free Trapped Oil!" sm "Maximum Oil Production at the Least Cost on a Technology-neutral Basis"
Austin and Houston |
Thermal EOR
www.ThermalEOR.com
What is Thermal
EOR?
Thermal EOR - or thermal enhanced oil recovery is one of the tried and true methods of "enhanced oil recovery" or "EOR," technologies for the recovery of "trapped oil" (or "stranded" oil). Two of the Thermal EOR technologies include "steam injection" and fire flooding.
What is Heavy
Oil Recovery?
Heavy oil recovery represents unique challenges and obstacles not found when producing "light oil."
There are vast amounts of heavy oil reserves found around the world including California and Canada that become even more strategic as the preferred light oil becomes depleted. Steam Injection has been the preferred heavy oil recovery method as well as cyclic steam stimulation, steam assisted gravity drainage or SAGD. Non-thermal methods of heavy oil recovery include cold flow with sand production, the cyclic solvent process and VAPEX.
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Austin, Texas
What is Steam Injection?
Steam Injection is an "enhanced oil recovery" (EOR) technology that represents one of the most efficient methods for recovery of "trapped oil," also known as stranded oil, particularly stranded oil that is considered to be "heavy oil."
Steam Injection is the primary method of "thermal stimulation" and production of oil in most oil reservoirs. There are several different forms of the technology, with the two leading methods known as; Cyclic Steam Stimulation and Steam Flooding. Both variations of Steam Injection are used to produce oil in oil reservoirs that are relatively shallow and which contain crude oils which are known to be "heavy oil." Heavy oil is "viscous" at the ambient temperatures within the native underground oil reservoir and formation.
Diagram of the Steam Injection
process courtesy of Dept of Energy
The major oil companies, when producing oil in "primary recovery" typically produce and recover the "easy oil" representing as little as 10% of the oil reservoir's "original oil in place." After recovering the easy oil, it is necessary to go into "secondary recovery" which is also referred to as enhanced oil recovery or tertiary recovery. These secondary recovery methods are expensive and sometimes only producing marginal amounts of oil. Therefore, some oil companies simply choose to plug and abandon the well and move on to the next project after only recovering as little as 10% of the oil in the reservoir leaving behind what is referred to as "trapped oil."
Trapped oil - in reservoirs where enhanced oil recovery technologies are deployed to enable the trapped oil to flow, or drain from the host rock in the underground reservoir, to a production well. Enhanced oil recovery technologies produce the otherwise trapped oil from the otherwise depleted reservoir.
What is EOR Technologies sm ?
EOR Technologies sm is a new company with a focus on deploying the optimum EOR technology on a "technology-neutral" basis - as determined by our clients specific requirements.
Over the past forty years, the enhanced oil recovery industry has produced a number of excellent and proven EOR technologies. However, the optimum EOR technology for any one particular client with declining oil production, is dependent on a number of variables. These variables must be identified and understood before selecting the correct EOR technology, including;
Specific oil reservoir type / condition
Depth of pay zone
Interfacial tension or IFT (displacement efficiency)
Mobility control (sweep efficiency)
Oil composition
Oil gravity
Oil reserve
Overall condition of well
Permeability
Porosity
Reservoir's brine (salinity NaCl) content
Reservoir's temperature
Working condition of reservoir
among others.
The "optimum" EOR technology for one reservoir and pay zone may not be the optimum EOR technology for another - even within the same oil field. That's why we are "EOR technology neutral." We apply the optimum EOR technology for each client's specific requirements for maximizing our client's oil recovery, at the least possible cost.
Enhanced oil recovery represents a significant opportunity for companies with declining oil production to significantly increase their oil production and revenues through our range of EOR technologies and services.
How much more oil can we produce from our "mature" oil field and
wells?
Enhanced oil recovery or "EOR" represents a significant opportunity for companies with declining oil production to significantly increase their oil production and revenues through our range of EOR technologies and services.
As seen above, there are a number of variables that determine the potential increase in production for any particular application.
With that said, some of the EOR technologies can have a significant reversal in oil production. And by "significant," this could mean anywhere from a 100% increase in oil production to a 500% increase in oil production.
Would increasing your oil production from 10 bbls/day to 20 bbls/day for a 100% increase in oil production, would that make a difference? How about going from 100 bbls/day to 500 bbls/day for a 500% increase in oil production. That's the possibility with enhanced oil recovery.
How do we move forward with EOR Technologies sm ?
EOR Technologies as an independent EOR technology-neutral company has an interest in assisting companies reverse their declining oil production and offers 4 options to move forward.
First of all, the oil production must be located in the USA or Canada and we must conduct a test on the client's well(s) to make a determination of existing conditions and the optimum solution(s). There is no charge for our initial telephone consult and pre-site visit evaluation.
What is "mobility" and mobility control within an oil reservoir
and why is it important ?
The definition of mobility (within an oil reservoir) is the ratio of its relative permeability in a
" porous" medium to its viscosity. By reducing water's mobility -
through the increase of its' viscosity through the addition of polymer (PAM)
the properties become nearly identical to the oil within the target pay
zone/reservoir.
In Chemical EOR and chemical flooding, such as "polymer flooding," water is made more "viscous"
(becoming more of a gel than a liquid) by adding polymer in order to obtain a "mobility ratio" of 1 between water and oil, i.e. the same mobility for the two different fluids.
In water with low a low salinity content, a a polymer concentration of 400 parts per million (ppm) or 0.4 g/l can easily boost the viscosity of water by nearly ten times. This makes the overall chemical flooding process more efficient requiring less water.
About EOR Technologies sm
We Free Trapped Oil sm with technology-neutral EOR Technologies, including; ASP flooding, Chemical Flooding / Chemical EOR, CO2 Injection, CO2-EOR, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), Gas Injection, Heavy Oil Recovery, Microbial EOR, Nitrogen Injection, Polymer Flooding, Solar EOR, Steam Injection, Surfactant EOR, Surfactant Flooding, Thermal EOR and other EOR technologies according to each well, reservoir or oil field's "optimum" solution. Some technologies provided by affiliated or partner companies.
“spending
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars every year for
oil, much of it from the Middle East, is just about the single stupidest
thing that modern society could possibly do. It’s very difficult to
think of anything more idiotic than that.”
~
R. James Woolsey, Jr., former Director of the CIA
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Price of Addiction ### to Foreign Oil |
According to R. James Woolsey, for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “The basic insight is to realize that global warming, the geopolitics of oil, and warfare in the Persian Gulf are not separate problems — they are aspects of a single problem, the West’s dependence on oil.”
Drill Baby Drill for:American jobs. American Energy Independence. Keep the 1/2 Trillion dollars in America we now send to OPEC and foreign countries each year to buy the oil America needs. And most importantly, to save the lives of America's brave soldiers, sailors and airmen fighting & dying for muslim oil.
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Thermal EOR
www.ThermalEOR.com
We Make Oil Recovery Profitable, Down to the Last Drop! sm
Austin, Texas
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