Cold enhanced oil recovery (EOR) production methods
Use the arrows to navigate between animations. Select icons to learn more about each method.
Depending on the characteristics of your reservoir, cold enhanced oil recovery (EOR) production methods can provide a cost-effective recovery option.
There are many factors which can make your selection of the most appropriate heavy oil recovery methods a challenge. These include viscosity, reservoir complexity, environmental, economic, and refining concerns.
The solution is a combination of upfront engineering to analyze your field, as well as engineering and design options, and reservoir and fluids characterization to understand the formation and oil characteristics throughout the reservoir. A field evaluation enables you to decide on and simulate the well construction and completion options which best fit your reservoir. This is combined with access to accurate reservoir monitoring and control systems and technologies which will help manage your wells.
How can you best navigate your way through the numerous possibilities while minimizing expenditure and risk, maximizing long-term production, and ensuring you make the right decisions for you and your asset?
Several cold EOR production methods offer recovery options for heavy oil:
Waterflood
One of the simplest EOR methods is waterflood-water injection. It is used to drive a front of heavy oil from one vertical well toward another vertical producing well.
Vapor Extraction (Vapex)
The basic design of a vapex well is similar to SAGD: two horizontal well pairs are spaced approximately 5 m apart. In vapex wells, a gas/solvent mix is injected into the reservoir through the upper well to stimulate gravity-enabled production in the lower well. This method has yet to be considered fully commercial but is an exciting technological development in heavy oil production.
