Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) & Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)

Qyrin Petroleum Technology has the experience and capabilities to assist and advice IOCs, NOCs, and Independent or Junior Oil Companies in their Exploration, Development, and Production activities. Our strengths are in oilfield technical services pertaining to oilfield evaluation, appraisal, development planning, production engineering design, and production optimization – leading to Improved Oil Recovery (IOR). Collectively our in-house Technical and R&D team can provide total solutions for Improved Oil Recovery with an added specialization and aptitude in Integrated Water Injections Solutions.

As the price of oil and the cost of exploration/production have increased with discoveries moving farther offshore, there is heightened focus in the oil and gas sector on increasing production from existing reservoirs. With large volumes of water used in the production process, water is increasingly moving from an operations issue to one of strategic significance. As a non-core capability for oil producers, water treatment is often considered a significant constraint in oil production, in both upstream and downstream operations.

As a result, innovative, environmentally-focused and reliable methods of meeting water treatment demands capable of operating in a highly challenging environment must be developed to meet the growing demand. The goal is to minimize operating costs, maximize footprint and energy efficiency, while maintaining production and/or increasing oil recovery rates.

Once a viable reservoir is developed, oil is removed from the subsurface using either natural reservoir pressure or displacement by an injected fluid. Over the course of the reservoir life, production will increase for a period of time until it reaches a peak production plateau and then begin to decline. Once pressures begin to drop within the reservoir, waterflooding activities will often commence to maintain oil production

The general term Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) is used to describe methods aimed at improving recovery including waterflooding and is inclusive of both secondary and tertiary (enhanced) recovery. The purpose of IOR is not only to restore formation pressure, but also to improve oil displacement or fluid flow in the reservoir. Depending on reservoir characteristics, various secondary methods are applied to maintain pressure in the reservoir which can include water or gas injection, resulting in incremental recoveries from 20-30% of the original oil in place (OOIP). A number of benefits can result from optimizing the injectant water quality in the case of waterflooding.

EOR, or tertiary methods, are used to improve the mobility of oil in the reservoir. EOR is a subset of IOR and includes methods ranging from steamflooding methods, chemical enhanced waterflooding, microbial addition and gas injection. Typically, tertiary programs improve recovery by an additional 5-20% of OOIP. The various phases of oil recovery in a reservoir are shown in the table below. This table also includes indicative methods used for recovery or enhancement along with the amount of oil extracted from these methods.