Analysis of EOR projects and updated screening criteria

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) provides a means to progressively expand hydrocarbon exploitation through scientific advancements. EOR methods have been proved to mobilize, and induce the flow of oil to producing wells in primary, secondary, and tertiary recovery stages. This work involves the construction of an EOR database based on numerous reported EOR projects. The database lists reservoir rock and fluid properties in addition to other project attributes related to oil saturations, incremental recovery, demography, and project start date. The database provides a profile of worldwide EOR trends. This paper also updates the EOR selection criteria published by Taber et al. in 1996 (Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) 35385). Finally, this paper illustrates the relationship of EOR project distribution to key reservoir characteristics. The database can be a vital tool for formulating field development plans, ensuring project viability, and clarifying research development priorities.

► This work has built an EOR database comprising of 652 reported projects.
► The EOR database was used to capture worldwide EOR project statistics and update the EOR screening criteria published by Taber et al. in 1996 (SPE 35385).
► In addition two EOR selection criteria are proposed in this work based on incremental recovery and EOR project distributions.
► The aforementioned EOR criteria correlate key reservoir property ranges with incremental recovery and the number of EOR projects implemented.