EOR Screening Including Technical, Operational, Environmental and Economic Factors Reveals Practical EOR Potential Offshore on the Norwegian Continental Shelf

Abstract

We present a novel advanced EOR screening approach, adding to an existing technical screening toolkit powerful new practical discriminators based on: (1) Operational complexity of converting existing offshore fields to new EOR processes; (2) Environmental acceptability of each EOR process, given current field configuration; (3) Commercial attractiveness and competitiveness. We apply the new approach to 14 EOR processes across 85 reservoirs from 46 oilfields and discoveries on the offshore Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). When the operational, environmental and economic thresholds were included, 45% of the technical opportunities were screened out, and the overall potential recovery increment was ~280 MSm3 (million standard cubic metres), the top processes being HC miscible, low salinity/polymer, low salinity, CO2 miscible, gels. Excluding environmental factors (i.e., assuming environmental issues could be solved by new technologies), the increment is ~340 MSm3, indicating a ~60 MSm3 prize for research into environmentally benign EOR methods. The economic thresholds used here were intentionally set low enough to eliminate only severely commercially challenged opportunities; using higher commercially competitive thresholds would reduce the overall volumes by a further ~40 MSm3. The extension of EOR screening to include operational, environmental and economic criteria is not intended as a substitute for in-depth studies of these factors, but it should help stakeholders make earlier and better-informed decisions about selection of individual EOR opportunities for deeper study, leading to piloting and eventual field-scale deployment. Revealing the sensitivity of each EOR process to operational, environmental and economic factors will also help focus R&D onto the practical, as well as technical, barriers to EOR implementation.

Smart Water flooding: Part 1: Laboratory workflow for screening EOR potential

“…The growing interest in the technology in recent years has led to several field trial tests showing positive Smart Water EOR effect (Al-Qattan et al, 2018;Erke et al, 2016;Yousef et al, 2012). Studies by Smalley et al (2020), Smalley et al (2018) showed that Smart Water/low salinity (LS) injection has also a large potential for implementation on NCS as an EOR method.…”