09/21/2019
Steam is the most popular EOR METHOD globally because of its great economy factor. MW irradiation has even greater economy than surface steam injeection lets take a look.
Steam (themal) Flooding Advantages
* Help produce up to 30% of oil in place
* Poses few environmental risks
* Echonomy is main factor (1 barrel injected steam recovers between 30 to .2 barrels of oil)
* Most effective in thick homogenous reservoirs
Steam Thermal Flooding Disadvantages
* Steam price rises up to $20-$30 per barrel of incremental oil recovered
* Requires enormous amounts of externally sourced high quality water
* Seam turns to hot water when it cools
* Mixes with and produced with oil
* Hot water separation and disposal needed
*Steam injection depends on connectivity of porosity system
* Difficult to control in fractured reservoirs
* Produced hot water with large physical, biologic environmental impact (Especially in forest setting).
* Not suitable for thin reservoirs
* Difficult to control in heterogenous reservoirs (eg. highly fractured reservoirs)
* Thermal injection effectiveness depth limited
* Environmental impact - large footprint (enormous footprint for solar thermal steam
*Capital
MW Thermal Flooding Advantage
* Will produce same or better than 30% of oil in place produced by steam flooding
* Not impacted by porosity system
* No minimal reservoir thickness requirement
* Steam produced in situ from formation water
* Does not require high quality external source of water
* Mw will turn to steam all water when cooling causes a phase change
* Thus produces :dry" oil
* No need for hot water disposal
* Produces zero CO2.with battery operation
* No depth limit on in situ steam generation
* Fraction of capital expense associated with steam
* injection less than 1/6th