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Review Papers | Petroleum Engineering | India | Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Aluka Dinesh Reddy

Abstract: Oil exploration and production actively began 100 years ago, from the present day. What we see now, known as primary production by natural flowing of oil by pumped wells. This covers 15 % of oil recovery from reservoir. Later 25 % of oil is recovered by water flooding is activated which is termed as secondary production. There is still significant oil left in the reservoir, if there is no proper employment of commercial valuable techniques for the production, the oilwell would simply be abandoned. But as the demand for oil kept raising new techniques emerged, eventually from those EOR was a successful in artificial up lifting of oil from the reservoir by providing enough pressure to the trapped oil to flow out of well. It is a tertiary production. EOR is different because it works from microscopic levels as well as by injecting the substances like gases, special liquid (polymers) and stream in the form of injection through injecting wells for oil recovery, which is termed as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The flooding in EOR, categorized as chemical flooding (by chemicals), stream or thermal injection (by stream) and miscible gas drive (CO2, N2 and LPG). These flooding will alter the physical and chemical properties of reservoirs for the flow of oil out of the well. EOR can unlock a percentage of 30-45 % of trapped oil. After naming as successful technique in onshore for tertiary production, research is still going to implement EOR in offshore, to improve tertiary production and exploit hidden billion barrels of oil.

Keywords: Primary production, tertiary production, chemical flooding, Thermal injection, miscible gas drive

Edition: Volume 4 Issue 4, April 2015,

Pages: 2252 - 2256