Innovation in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Fulfilling worldwide energy demand in the 21 st century is the most challenging problem. New kinds of energy sources along with the new technological breakthroughs to maintain enough oil and gas supply are needed to meet the tremendous rise in world’s energy demand. Recent dramatic fall in oil prices has accentuated the problem. Now, the challenge is to fill out the increasing gap between energy demand and supply with more cost effective techniques. Recently, Abu Dhabi University has filed a patent application (US-Patent Application No 15/342,664) reporting the invention of Dr. Omar Chaalal that fulfills practically all criteria discussed above. In this paper, a ‘green’ alternative to chemical flooding is proposed. The new technology proposed uses two types of plant extracts that increases the total oil recovery to 96% of initial oil in place (IOIP) during the tertiary recovery mode. While water flood recovered around 50% of the IOIP, 0.5% wt of the natural plant extract recovered 77% in the secondary recovery mode. The additives were extracted from two plants available in the United Arab Emirates (Product A and Product B). These natural extracts proved to be very effective in formations containing water with a salinity range of 70,000 to 180,000ppm with temperature going up to 100 °C.