THE USE OF OIL-SOLUBLE POLYMERS TO ENHANCE OIL RECOVERY IN HARD TO RECOVER HYDROCARBONS RESERVES
Chang WJ, Sudad H Al-Obaidi, Patkin AA
Abstract
Currently, the share of new fields in many places over the world, which are at the initial stage of development, is constantly growing.Fields often have a complex heterogeneous structure with hard-to-recover reserves, therefore, for their effective development, it is necessary to use completely new approaches, including improving existing methodsof enhanced oil recovery.In this work, experimental verification of a new technology using oil-soluble polymers and comparing it with technology based on the use of water-soluble polymers has been performed. In laboratory conditions, a newtechnology for polymer flooding at an early stage of development using oil-soluble polymers was developed and experimentally confirmed. The new technology has made it possible to increase the degree of reservesrecovery by an average of 30% compared to existing methods of enhanced oil recovery and to solve a number of problems arising from the use of water-soluble polymers. Such problems are the freezing of aqueouspolymer solutions in winter and the poor solubility of polymers in formation waters with a high salt content. The use of new technology can also reduce energy costs by 25%.