Heavy Oil Characterization and Enhanced Oil Recovery: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Most of the heavy oil productions in the world are through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods only and predominantly by thermal EOR techniques. This is mainly due to low primary recovery of heavy oil because of high viscosity leading to low mobility. Thermal EOR is best suitable to address the challenge of low mobility. As in thermal EOR, heat is being used primarily to reduce the oil viscosity. Any EOR method is technology and cost intensive, hence to screen and design an EOR process for any heavy oil reservoir, it is imperative to have detail crude oil characterization of the target reservoir. This contribution highlights the basic tenets of EOR pertaining to heavy oil where different methods of heavy oil characterization with experimental procedures and the analysis of the laboratory results are presented. Significances of heavy oil characterization in the designing, planning, execution and monitoring of EOR processes are demonstrated with examples of successful commercial thermal EOR application in the heavy oil belt of Cambay Basin of India. The challenges faced in the ongoing commercial thermal EOR application in the heavy oil fields of Balol and Santhal of Cambay Basin in Mehsana, India, could be tackled by understanding details of macromolecular characterization of heavy crude oils.KeywordsSARATGADSCOxidationKineticsExponential factorEOR