American Energy Production Inc(fka AENP)

[Jagman]

Enhanced Oil Recovery/CO2 Injection

Program Goal
Enable enhanced recovery of the nation’s “stranded” oil resources. DOE’s program focuses on evaluating possible candidate locations for future CO2 injection enhanced oil recovery, utilizing CO2 from industrial sources, as well as geologic sources.

Crude oil development and production in U.S. oil reservoirs can include up to three distinct phases: primary, secondary, and tertiary (or enhanced) recovery.

During primary recovery, the natural pressure of the reservoir or gravity drive oil into the wellbore, combined with artificial lift techniques (such as pumps) which bring the oil to the surface. But only about 10 percent of a reservoir's original oil in place is typically produced during primary recovery. Shortly after World War II, producers began to employ secondary recovery techniques to extend the productive life of U.S. oil fields, often increasing ultimate recovery to 20 to 40 percent of the original oil in place. For the most part, these techniques have involved injecting water to displace oil and drive it to a production wellbore. In some cases, the reinjection of natural gas has been employed to maintain reservoir pressure (natural gas is often produced simultaneously with the oil from a reservoir).

However, with much of the easy-to-produce oil already recovered from U.S. oil fields, producers have attempted several tertiary, or enhanced oil recovery (EOR), techniques that offer prospects for ultimately producing 30 to 60 percent, or sometimes more, of the reservoir's original oil in place. An estimated 377 billion barrels of oil in place represent the “stranded” resource that could be the target for EOR applications. In the United States, three major categories of EOR have been found to be commercially successful to varying degrees:

Thermal recovery, which involves the introduction of heat such as the injection of steam to lower the viscosity, or thin, the heavy viscous oil, and improve its ability to flow through the reservoir.

Chemical injection, which can involve the use of long-chained molecules called polymers to increase the effectiveness of waterfloods, or the use of detergent-like surfactants to help lower the surface tension that often prevents oil droplets from moving through a reservoir.

Gas injection, which uses gases such as natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide that expand in a reservoir to push additional oil to a production wellbore, or other gases that dissolve in the oil to lower its viscosity and increases its flow rate.

Each of these techniques has been hampered by its relatively high cost and, in some cases, by the unpredictability of its effectiveness. Today, less than 700,000 barrels per day of oil is produced in the United States by EOR processes (compared to about 6 million barrels per day of total domestic production). Thermal techniques account for over 50 percent of U.S. EOR production, primarily being applied in California; gas injection accounts for nearly 50 percent. Chemical techniques account for less than one percent of EOR production in the United States.

More at:
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/oilgas/eor/