Proposal EOR Fiscal Incentives to Increase the Recovery Factor in Mexican Fields Implementing Enhanced Oil Recovery Methods through Sensitivity Analysis with Different Contracts

The current business strategy of Operators in Mexico has considered finance Enhance Oil Recovery projects. Moreover, the potential in Mexico for EOR is represented by 80% of the total production coming from mature fields. However, these projects are difficult to be executed below current circumstances, oil prices and existing fiscal terms. For this reason, there is an opportunity to evaluate how to switch the situation and generate scenarios where it might be possible to perform such as complex project. Therefore, this study presents a methodology from a technical and economical perspective that includes the selection of a representative reservoir, evaluating different production forecast scenarios below EOR schemes, comparing fiscal models and running sensitivity analysis to end up with an incentive adjustment, to evaluate the potential benefits of fiscal incentives and how they could be applied effectively to EOR implementation projects. To demonstrate the potential of these projects in Mexico, a reservoir with specific characteristics had been selected to simulate the performance of a mature field where thermal pilot projects are conceptualized. Nevertheless, the focus of this study is to evaluate the current fiscal terms and taxes versus innovative fiscal terms with applied incentives. This work pursuits to find a window of opportunity for complex projects that embraces current oil prices, appropriate fiscal terms, tax incentives, and technical considerations. Overall, the proposed methodology defines how to apply the appropriate incentive in combination with several parameter to enable the execution of these projects. Finally, as a result of this study, it had been demonstrated that at given conditions and adding a package of incentives, there is a win-win schema where the Government and the Operators obtain higher returns than the conditions of exploiting the fields only with natural depletion. These proposed conditions can be used to promote economic benefits that encourage EOR projects and attract investment in Mexico, and consequently, increase recovery factor of mature fields.