Implementation of Enhanced oil Recovery Techniques in India: New Challenges and Technologies

Analyzing the case of France, this article aims to explain how the development of enhanced oil recovery techniques over the last decade contributed to politicizing the subsurface, that is putting underground resources at the center of social unrest and political debates. France faced a decline of its oil and gas activity in the 1990s, followed by a renewal with subsurface activity in the late 2000s using enhanced oil recovery techniques. An industrial demonstrator for carbon capture and storage was developed between 2010 and 2013 , while projects targeting unconventional oil and gas were pushed forward between 2008 and 2011 before eventually being canceled. We analyze how the credibility, legitimacy, and governance of those techniques were developed and how conflicts made the role of the subsurface for energy transition the target of political choices. The level of political and industrial support and social protest played a key role in building project legitimacy, while the types of narratives and their credibility determined the distinct trajectories of hydraulic fracturing and carbon capture and storage in France. The conflicts over enhanced oil recovery techniques are also explained through the critical assessment of the governance framework that tends to exclude civil society stakeholders. We suggest that these conflicts illustrated a new type of politicization of the subsurface by merging geostrategic concerns with social claims about governance, ecological demands about pollution, and linking local preoccupations to global climate change.

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Enhanced oil recovery techniques for heavy oil and oilsands reservoirs after steam injection

Applied Energy ◽

10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.01.244 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 239 ◽

pp. 1190-1211 ◽

Cited By ~ 58

Author(s):

Xiaohu Dong ◽

Huiqing Liu ◽

Zhangxin Chen ◽

Keliu Wu ◽

Ning Lu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Heavy Oil ◽

Steam Injection ◽

Recovery Techniques

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Enhanced Oil-Recovery Techniques-State-Of-The-Art Review

Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology ◽

10.2118/77-04-01 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 16 (04) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Narendra Gangoli ◽

George Thodos

Keyword(s):

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Recovery Techniques

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Technical constraints limiting application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to petroleum production in the United States

10.2172/5585654 ◽

1984 ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

The United States ◽

Petroleum Production ◽

Recovery Techniques

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A Comprehensive Review of Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery: Techniques Evaluation

Journal of Energy Resources Technology ◽

10.1115/1.4041096 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 141 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Esmail M. A. Mokheimer ◽

M. Hamdy ◽

Zubairu Abubakar ◽

Mohammad Raghib Shakeel ◽

Mohamed A. Habib ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Crude Oil ◽

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Production ◽

Economic Benefits ◽

Comprehensive Review ◽

Second Stage ◽

Energy Demands ◽

Recovery Techniques ◽

Third Stage

The oil production from any well passes through three stages. The first stage is the natural extraction of oil under the well pressure, the second stage starts when the well pressure decreases. This second stage includes flooding the well with water via pumping sea or brackish water to increase the well pressure and push the oil up enhancing the oil recovery. After the first and secondary stages of oil production from the well, 20–30% of the well reserve is extracted. The well is said to be depleted while more than 70% of the oil are left over. At this stage, the third stage starts and it is called the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or tertiary recovery. Enhanced oil recovery is a technology deployed to recover most of our finite crude oil deposit. With constant increase in energy demands, EOR will go a long way in extracting crude oil reserve while achieving huge economic benefits. EOR involves thermal and/or nonthermal means of changing the properties of crude oil in reservoirs, such as density and viscosity that ensures improved oil displacement in the reservoir and consequently better recovery. Thermal EOR, which is the focus of this paper, is considered the dominant technique among all different methods of EOR. In this paper, we present a brief overview of EOR classification in terms of thermal and nonthermal methods. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of different thermal EOR methods is presented and discussed.

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