A pragmatic approach to polymer flooding to accelerate field implementation

Abstract

Background: Polymer flooding is a well-known enhanced oil recovery technique which can increase recovery factors in mature oilfields above 10% of the oil originally in place. Despite a lengthy history and many published field cases, the speed of deployment is still rather slow. With the need to boost energy production while minimizing energy wastes and carbon emissions, considering this technique known to reduce water usage and accelerate oil recovery should be a must.
 Aim: This short publication aims at providing guidelines to accelerate deployment of polymer injection in various oilfields and a couple of pragmatic approaches recognizing the need for field data instead of poorly constrained simulations or incomplete laboratory studies.
 Materials and methods: After a brief review of the technique and current implementation workflows, we will discuss new approaches to foster the deployment of injection pilots by showing how polymer injection can reduce emissions and energy wastes while accelerating oil production.
 Results: We provide a different perspective on polymer injection with pragmatic tools and ideas showing that going to the field fast provides more information than any laboratory study.
 Conclusion: Given the current need for mitigating oil production declines, polymer flooding is a technique of choice which can be deployed fast if basic criteria explained in this paper are met.