Technologies for Advancing Offshore Enhanced Oil Recovery Capabilities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Subia Melchert ◽  
Roy Clayton Long
Keyword(s):  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
Readiness Level

Abstract Last year the Department of Energy (DOE) presented a description of the expansion of its research portfolio from one focused on research primarily for onshore applications to one that includes projects specifically for offshore application. That paper (OTC - 30469-MS) also included key research results for the portfolio beginning with projects initiated in 2007. This paper follows on that theme and presents an overview of the Department's current research portfolio focusing on recent-past learnings, current learnings, and research gaps identified from the projects in the current research portfolio 2017-2023. Discussion includes projects that are sponsored by the Department as part of its public-private partnerships with principal investigators from industry and academia, and those projects sponsored by the Department at its National Laboratories. The discussion also includes an overview of activities and projects jointly pursued by DOE and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) pursuant to the July 2020 Memorandum of Collaboration signed by both agencies. Major insights presented in this paper focus on innovative mid-Technology Readiness Level (mid-TRL) technologies that will enable cost-effective enhanced oil recovery in deepwater and ultra-deepwater including insights for cement and wellbore integrity, flow assurance, life extension of offshore platforms and risers, sensors and telecommunications, early kick detection, chemical delivery, data analytics involving big data sets and modeling, and advanced sensors for EOR operations. Many of the projects reviewed in this paper are part of the portfolio of projects that are sponsored by the Department at the National Laboratories while at the same time includes projects that are cost-shared with private sector and research partners in academia. The breadth of the portfolio illustrates the overall approach of the offshore research portfolio especially for enhanced oil recovery. Recently the National Petroleum Council completed a study for the Secretary of Energy titled Meeting the Dual Challenge: A roadmap to at-scale deployment of carbon capture, use, and storage in which the potential for the use and potential long-term storage of CO2 used in enhanced oil recovery is considered for both onshore and offshore settings (NPC 2019).

Cost-Effective CO2 Sequestration Through Enhanced Oil Recovery

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dandina N. Rao ◽  
Zaki A. Bassiouni
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
High Purity ◽  
Co2 Sequestration ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
The United States ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Flue Gases ◽  
The Us

Abstract The five-year long United Nations campaign for the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere culminated in the Kyoto protocol of 1997. Since this Kyoto conference attended by nearly 160 nations, sequestration of carbon dioxide from industrial flue gases and its storage and/or utilization have been receiving significantly enhanced attention. According to the US Department of Energy, very little research and development has been done in the United States on promising options that might address CO2 capture, reuse and storage technologies. An exception to this is the utilization of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Over a decade of industrial experience has accumulated at more than 70 enhanced oil recovery sites around the world where CO2 is injected to improve oil recovery from waterflooded reservoirs. The accumulated experience in the US, where about 32 million tons of CO2 per year are being utilized in EOR, has amply demonstrated that the retention of CO2 in the reservoir is very high when the original pressure is not exceeded. Thus, CO2 injected enhanced oil recovery presents itself as a mature field-tested technology for sequestering CO2 at a low net cost due to the revenues from recovered oil and gas. Much of the CO2-EOR experience to date in the US involves the use of high-purity carbon dioxide for conducting miscible floods in conventional crude oil reservoirs. Due to the high costs associated with supplying high-purity CO2 to the reservoir, this process has seen limited commercial success. However, the past research at LSU and elsewhere has amply demonstrated that impure CO2 was also effective in enhancing oil recoveries. This makes the abundant supply of flue gases from fossil-fuel combustion operations a viable and cost-effective option without the need for separating CO2 from the flue gas mixtures. This paper attempts to review and synthesize the literature dealing with geologic sequestration of CO2 in EOR projects. The available data are analyzed both from EOR and CO2 sequestration points of view.

scholarly journals CO$$_{2}$$ Convection in Hydrocarbon Under Flowing Conditions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trine S. Mykkeltvedt ◽  
Sarah E. Gasda ◽  
Tor Harald Sandve
Keyword(s):  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Flow Behavior ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Fine Grid ◽  
Cost Effective Method ◽  
Gravity Effects ◽  
Petroleum Resources ◽  
Nearby Point ◽  
Diffusive Processes

AbstractCarbon-neutral oil production is one way to improve the sustainability of petroleum resources. The emissions from produced hydrocarbons can be offset by injecting capture CO$$_{2}$$ 2 from a nearby point source into a saline aquifer for storage or a producing oil reservoir. The latter is referred to as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and would enhance the economic viability of CO$$_{2}$$ 2 sequestration. The injected CO$$_{2}$$ 2 will interact with the oil and cause it to flow more freely within the reservoir. Consequently, the overall recovery of oil from the reservoir will increase. This enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique is perceived as the most cost-effective method for disposing captured CO$$_{2}$$ 2 emissions and has been performed for many decades with the focus on oil recovery. The interaction between existing oil and injected CO$$_{2}$$ 2 needs to be fully understood to effectively manage CO$$_{2}$$ 2 migration and storage efficiency. When CO$$_{2}$$ 2 and oil mix in a fully miscible setting, the density can change non-linearly and cause density instabilities. These instabilities involve complex convective-diffusive processes, which are hard to model and simulate. The interactions occur at the sub-centimeter scale, and it is important to understand its implications for the field scale migration of CO$$_{2}$$ 2 and oil. In this work, we simulate gravity effects, namely gravity override and convective mixing, during miscible displacement of CO$$_{2}$$ 2 and oil. The flow behavior due to the competition between viscous and gravity effects is complex, and can only be accurately simulated with a very fine grid. We demonstrate that convection occurs rapidly, and has a strong effect on breakthrough of CO$$_{2}$$ 2 at the outlet. This work for the first time quantifies these effects for a simple system under realistic conditions.

Enhanced oil recovery as a stepping stone to carbon capture and sequestration

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 239-251
Author(s):  
Dana M. Abdulbaqi ◽  
Carol A. Dahl ◽  
Mohammed R. AlShaikh
Keyword(s):  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Carbon Capture And Sequestration ◽  
Stepping Stone

scholarly journals Making the subsurface political: How enhanced oil recovery techniques reshaped the energy transition

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 733-750
Author(s):  
Sébastien Chailleux
Keyword(s):  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Recovery Techniques ◽  
And Storage

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.

scholarly journals Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO2 Storage Potential Outside North America: An Economic Assessment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Ward ◽  
Wolfgang Heidug
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Net Present Value ◽  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Economic Assessment ◽  
Oil Reservoirs ◽  
Co2 Eor ◽  
Storage Potential

Storing carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in oil reservoirs as part of CO2 -based enhanced oil recovery (CO2 -EOR) can be a cost-effective solution to reduce emissions into the atmosphere. In this paper, we analyze the economics of this option in order to estimate the amount of CO2 that could be profitably stored in different regions of the world. We consider situations in which the CO2 -EOR operator either purchases the CO2 supplied or is paid for its storage. Building upon extensive data sets concerning the characteristics and location of oil reservoirs and emission sources, the paper focuses on opportunities outside North America. Using net present value (NPV) as an indicator for profitability, we conduct a break-even analysis to relate CO2 supply prices (positive or negative) to economically viable storage potential.

scholarly journals Monitoring the fate of injected CO2 using geodetic techniques

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald W. Vasco ◽  
Timothy H. Dixon ◽  
Alessandro Ferretti ◽  
Sergey V. Samsonov
Keyword(s):  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Surface Deformation ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
Geologic Sequestration ◽  
Geophysical Field ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
Sampling Intervals ◽  
Frequent Sampling ◽  
Pressure Changes

Geodetic methods comprise one class of geophysical data that are sensitive to changes in effective pressure within operating reservoirs, albeit indirectly through induced deformation. Geodetic observations, which have observation intervals that vary from seconds to days, weeks, or months, generally provide more frequent sampling compared to existing geophysical methodologies (such as seismic time-lapse monitoring), which typically invoke repeat times of months to years. These differences in sampling intervals are primarily due to the extensive effort, and hence cost, of conducting geophysical field operations, which often precludes executing a large number of surveys. Satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is cost effective and used in many applications, including monitoring the injection of carbon dioxide (CO2) for both long-term storage and enhanced oil production. An application to the geologic sequestration of CO2 in Algeria revealed northwest migration along a fault/fracture zone intersected by the injection well. A study in a Texas field demonstrated that enhanced oil recovery utilizing CO2 leads to observable surface deformation that may be used to characterize the sequestered CO2 and to estimate the pressure changes within the reservoir induced by injection and production.

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