EOR technologies such as CO 2 flooding, chemical floods and WAG have been on the forefront of oil and gas R&D for the past 4 decades. While most of them are demonstrating very promising results in both lab scale and field pilots, the thrive for exploring additional EOR technologies while achieving full field application has yet to be achieved. Nano EOR is among the new frontiers that demand more improvements, therefore, new concepts and extensive innovative experimental procedures are required to identify and address key associated uncertainties.The procedure proposed in this report includes an understanding of the Nano-EOR physical processes on lab-scale models of carbonate reservoir retrieved core plugs. (Ogolo et al., 2010). The main objectives include reducing the HSE concerns of handling and transporting the nano particles as well as targeting the unswept oil.Carbonate core-plugs from Abu Dhabi producing oilfields with porosity ranging from 10 to 24% and permeability ranging from 77 to 149 mD were tested. Several nano particles including Fe (III) O, CuO and NiO of 50 nm range were tested after the waterflooding stage and compared for ultimate recovery factors. The nano EOR was also compared on the same cores subjected to the same conditions against chemical EOR and Electrically Enhanced Oil Recovery (EEOR). A Smart Nano-EOR process is proposed in this study that allows shifting from simultaneous to sequential Nano-EOR alongside EK.The results obtained on our tested cores reveal that the waterflooding recovery factor ranged from 48 to 63% based on the rock properties, whereas Smart Nano-EOR revealed an ultimate recovery factor of 57 to 85% respectively. The Smart Nano-EOR process is fine tuned to reach the ultimate recovery factor when the specific mechanism is optimized based on both rock and fluid properties. Uncovering physical process enablers will be discussed in this paper to further understand the mechanisms involved in Smart-Nano-EOR.

An automatic target tracking algorithm must be capable of dealing with an unknown number of targets and their trajectory behaviour inside the surveillance region. However, due to target motion uncertainties, heavily populated clutter measurements and low detection probabilities of targets, the smoothing algorithms often fail to detect the true number of target trajectories. In this study, the authors discussed some deficiencies and insignificances of existing smoothing algorithms and proposed a new smoothing data association based algorithm called fixed-interval integrated track splitting smoothing (ITS-S). The proposed algorithm employ smoothing data association algorithm and compared with existing smoothing algorithms outperform in terms of target trajectory accuracy and false-track discrimination (FTD). However, existing algorithms fail to generate smoothed target trajectory and provides insignificant FTD performance in such difficult environments as illustrated in this simulation study. The ITS-S shows improved smoothing performance compared with that of existing algorithms for a manoeuvering target tracking in a heavily populated cluttered environment and low detection probabilities.

No abstract

EOR technologies such as CO 2 flooding and chemical floods have gained increased interest due to the decreasing number of new-field discoveries, increasing number of maturing fields and higher oil price. Therefore, promising results have been demonstrated in both lab scale and field pilots. Among the emerging EOR technologies, is the surfactant EOR integrated with the application of electrically enhanced oil recovery (EEOR), which is gaining increased popularity due to a number of reservoirrelated advantages such as reduction in fluid viscosity, water-cut, increased reservoir permeability, reduced HSE concerns and increased targeting of the unswept oil.Core flood tests were performed using carbonate core-plugs from Abu Dhabi producing oilfields which were saturated with medium crude oil in a specially designed EK core-flood setup. Electrokinetics (DC voltage of 2V/cm) was applied on these oil saturated cores while waterflooding simultaneously until the ultimate recovery was reached. In the second stage, the recovery was further enhanced by injecting nonionic surfactant (APG) along with sequential application of EK. This was compared with simultaneous application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding on oil-wet cores. A smart Surfactant-EOR process was done in this study that allowed shifting from sequential to simultaneous Surfactant-EOR alongside EEOR.The experimental results at ambient conditions show that the application of waterflooding on the carbonate cores yields recovery of approximately 42-64% along with an additional 6-14% incremental recovery that resulted upon the injection of non-ionic surfactant. However, there was a further 12-15% recovery enhanced by the application of EK-assisted surfactant flooding, which could be promising for water swept reservoirs. In addition, EK was shown to enhance the carbonate reservoir's permeability by approximately 11-29%. Furthermore, this process can be engineered to be a greener approach as the water requirement can be reduced upto 20% in the presence of electrokinetics which is economically feasible.

Conventional acidizing, though useful in increasing the effective permeability in the near well-bore region, has compatibility and operational issues such as limitation in depth of penetration and HSE issues to handle, transport and injection of high concentration of acid into the well. On the other hand, the application of electrokinetics (EK) has a number of economic and environmental advantages such as reduced oil viscosity, reduced water-cut, and no depth limitation. This paper presents recent research that demonstrates the impact of EK on matrix acid stimulation in carbonate reservoirs with varying acid concentrations and voltage gradients. Core-flood tests were conducted by saturating core-plugs retrieved from Abu Dhabi oilfields with medium and light crude oil in a specially designed core-flood setup. Initially, EK was applied using acids of varying concentrations up to 1.2% HCl injected at the anode to cathode (producer) at 0.25ml/min. Experiments were also repeated with low concentration HCl stimulation without the application of EK. Several correlations related to acid concentration, displacement efficiency and permeability enhancement are presented here at ambient and reservoir conditions on aged oil-wet core-plugs. The experimental results have shown that the application of waterflooding on the carbonate cores yields an average oil recovery of 60%. An additional 17-29% oil recovery was enhanced by the application of EK-assisted low concentration HCl-IOR (EK LA-IOR). In addition, EK LA-IOR was shown to enhance the reservoir's permeability by 32% on average across the tested core-plugs. It was observed that low acid concentration with application of low voltage EK, recorded a maximum oil displacement of 81% at reservoir conditions. Furthermore, this technique can be engineered to be a sustainable process in the presence of EK as the concentration and voltage gradient can be optimized to reduce the amount of acid injected and power consumption by 20-41%, further improving economic feasibility.