Improved recovery

The ultimate goal of the VISTA-IOR programme is to provide new knowledge and technology that will increase ultimate oil and gas recovery factors as well as accelerating production. To achieve this, fundamental knowledge within mathematical flow modelling, advanced thermodynamics, new recovery methods and in understanding the link between geology, geophysics and displacement mechanisms in the reservoirs are all central.

Both new discoveries of hydrocarbon reserves and increased oil recovery of existing fields are of great national and international economic importance to fulfil rising global energy demand and to maintain production levels. This is particularly the case on the NCS, where small increases in the average recovery factors will have extremely large economical effects - It is clear that a significant IOR effort on the NCS is needed to maintain national production levels before existing producing fields are decommissioned.

In 2009 the area committee gave particular focus on initiating projects with challenging thermodynamics in the recovery methods, where the reservoir fluids have to be taken through a phase transition to be efficiently produced. Two specific examples are naturally occurring gas hydrates and extra heavy oil, and they were both started in 2009.  This focus is expected to be strengthened further. The VISTA-strategy for improved oil recovery points on one additional area:
Understanding of remaining oil distribution in 3 dimensions for water flooded reservoirs and its impact on tertiary oil recovery methods. This area will be given focus and priority in 2011.

In 2011, there has been good progress for the candidates with many interesting results within the area of Improved Oil Recovery. One project has been completed during 2011. The project was a post-doc study within reservoir monitoring and characterization using electromagnetic data.
One new Ph.D. project was accepted by the board in 2011. The project is within numerical modelling of shale-gas extraction processes. The Ph.D. candidate is Kjetil Thøgersen.  The project will be conducted at the Center of Excellence at UIO and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural science at UIO.  This project will focus on numerical modeling, but will be closely integrated with experimental and field studies. The project will address three subjects, starting from a low-risk project where we have significant experimental and observational constraints, and move towards areas where we currently have less experience. The main focus will be on: Flow, fracturing and permeability generation in tight rocks.

For an overview of completed projects, please contact VISTA.