Surfactants are used as suspending and foaming agents. Crude oils deposited and found in sandstone and high temperature environment are often very light. But, Pore throats restrictions made it difficult for such oil to flow unaided. Specially designed surfactants, called IbileSurfac, will serve as a carrier to crude oil, while overcoming barriers posed by saline water. This study was primarily conducted on locally sourced surfactants, called IbileSurfac. IbileSurfac, together with Tween 80, Teepol, and Lauryl Sulphate were screened with NaCl-only brines and n-octane fluid at a unitary value of water/oil ratio for temperatures between approximately 900C and 120°C; at intervals of 5°C. All test cases were performed in the absence of methanol or ethanol (No alcohols present) and other co-solvents, in a Pressure-Volume-Temperature cell. Both volume and pressure were kept constant. Varying phase behavior was observed for each class of surfactants, with minimum salinity value of 0.001parts per thousand and maximum value of 0.002 parts per thousand of NaCl for IbileSurfac and others. IbileSurfac has highest Oil solubilization, and lowest in Teepol, with Tween 80 and Lauryl Sulphate, maintaining middle positions. The test results for 120°C at unitary-water-oil-ratio (WOR) show that Ibile Surfac homogenized to form transparent and aqueous single phase liquid, which can flow easily through pore throat restrictions. This provides a useful lead for initial selection of appropriate surfactants for EOR processes. IbileSurfac is very promising because it has a natural structure that needed the least comparative treatment cost for high temperature and saline environment.

Surfactants are used to lower surface/interfacial tension in crude oil reservoir, and hence increase oil mobility. Niger Delta Oilfields are matured and may be said to be characterized with heavy hydrocarbons. The heaviness is a result of years of associated gas flaring; leaving behind only oil. It is imperative to inject surfactants to mobilize oil column through flooding. Unique local raw materials have been identified and developed to form Ibile Surfacs. Ibile Surfacs is biodegradable, easy to formulate and readily available as oilfield chemicals. Three branded market samples of surfactants were collected for comparative studies, with the Ibile Surfacs. Branded market samples obtained are Tween 80, Lauryl Sulphate, and Teepol. Some of the test conducted for the samples are stability under similar temperature values, environmental biodegradability, ability to foam and sustain foaminess with saline water and hard water respectively. The result obtained for biodegradability shows that, the Ibile Surfac maintain reasonable leads ahead of Lauryl Sulphate and Teepol and similar characteristics with Tween 80. Results obtained for stability under the same temperature values, reflected equal trends for Tween 80, Lauryl Sulphate, and Teepol with Ibile Surfacs showing a lead. Similarly, a table of results tabulated for foamability and foaminess sustainability gave strong indications that Ibile Surfacs foamed continuously in hard water. Whereas, Tween 80, Lauryl Sulphate, and Teepol broke down at moderates water hardness. It can be safely stated that, Ibile Surfacs is better than trio of sampled market brands, and can be use to replace either Tween 80 or Lauryl Sulphate, and/or Teepol.

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Developing a robust and facile process route for fatty acid methyl ester sulfonate (MES) synthesis is of importance for industrial applications. Herein, Taguchi orthogonal array (OA) approach was used for the first time to establish the optimum process condition for the sulfonation of methyl esters (ME) with chlorosulfonic acid (CSA). According to the experimental design, the most significant parameter was sulfonation temperature, followed by CSA/ME molar ratio. Under the optimum sulfonation conditions (that is, 70°C sulfonation temperature, 2.0 h sulfonation time, 1.5:1 mol/mol CSA/ME molar ratio and 2.0 h aging time), the MES yield and the corresponding signal/noise ratio were 92.08 ± 0.28% and 39.28, respectively. The obtained FTIR and 1H NMR data revealed spectra associated with methyl (CH2 asymmetric and CH2 symmetric stretching vibrations), esters (CO, CO, and OCH3), and sulfonate (SO) groups in the MES sample synthesized under optimal conditions, thus confirming the target MES product. Surface tension measurements revealed that the optimal MES sample had a low critical miscelle concentration of 0.082 g/L at a surface tension of 51.2 mN/m, implying the possibility of better performance.

This study examined impacts of successive iteration of root-mean-square values on matching historical data with data obtained from simulator. Root-Mean-Square (RMS) is simply the magnitude of a set of numbers. The magnitude is a difference between two data sets, which was reduced. An RMS value of 24.389 was reduced to 20.788 and then to an acceptable value of 11.72. A match obtained was used to make 10 years forecast with a fluid rate of 500stb/day and 1500stb/day for two predictions. Results obtained from one of the simulator's predictions were compared with a third-order degree polynomial. It is required to identify regions whose faults have significant contribution to produced water volume. This is necessary because some faults do have zero transmissibility. Region with zero transmissibility sealing fault cannot be produced by flooding across the region. Inactive faults were identified through sensitivity analysis; it was discovered that bottom and flank water entered the region through the left flank and vertically upward from the bottom. Historical data of produced water were eventually matched with that simulated at an RMS value of 11.72 to generate future data for Sagbama. Sagbama is a name given to a hydrocarbon reservoir with the following characteristics: 16,404.2ft by 16,404.2ft by 197.85ft, gridded into 1,640.42ft in x-direction, 1,642.42ft in y-direction, and 49.212ft in z-direction. It consists of live oil and gas with unknown volume of bottom water drive. Densities of oil, water, and gas under consideration are 749.389 kg/m 3 , 1000 kg/m 3 and 1.11242 kg/m 3 respectively. Reference pressure was 400bar and rock compressibility took a value of 4.0E-5/bar. Datum depth of 3000m with 331.65bar as it the pressure at the datum, depth to gas-oil contact was 3000m without capillary pressure.