A new approach based on VIKOR and Monte-Carlo algorithms for determining the most efficient enhanced oil recovery methods: EOR screening

Abstract

Most of oil reservoirs in the world have faced decrease in production and they are in the second half of their life cycle. Therefore, tertiary and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques are needed for continuous production from these reservoirs. As choosing the most appropriate EOR methods for a reservoir is a challenging task for reservoir engineers, screening of EOR approaches is of high importance before any full field simulation and experiments. Enhanced oil recovery screening is a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem and hence, a systematic statistical algorithm based on MCDM can be used for this purpose. In this study, for the first time, a new EOR screening method is proposed by using VIKOR and Monte-Carlo algorithms. The approach used a large database of successful EOR projects around the world and was applied to 12 various EOR methods including a wide range of conditions and properties. Pre-processing was performed on the gathered database and then based on reservoir engineering analyses and using a pairwise comparison matrix, initial weights were considered for the parameters in each EOR method. Afterward, these weights were used in the proposed VIKOR MCDM calculation algorithm and the corresponding numerical values of EOR techniques for each reservoir were obtained. Finally, the EOR method with the highest corresponding value was selected as the most suitable method. Results demonstrated that by using the presented approach, a high classification accuracy of 98% was obtained for different cases, which shows the proficiency and robustness of the developed screening algorithm. In addition, the reliability of the developed method was validated using data obtained from 11 oil reservoirs in the southwest of Iran. Also, the results were compared with the results of previous studies and they were in a very good match. The developed approach is less expensive and faster than full field simulation method and can be used as an efficient EOR screening approach for reservoirs with different properties in the world.