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DOE - Fossil Energy Techline - Issued on: June 20, 1996 DOE Awards 3 New Contracts to Advance Chemical Flooding to Aid U.S. Oil RecoveryTulsa, OK - With the U.S. oil industry increasingly in need of advanced technologies to keep declining domestic oil fields in production, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that it is providing Federal cost-sharing funding to three university research teams to advance chemical flooding, a technique that may recover more bypassed crude oil than other available methods. Chemical flooding involves injecting environmentally safe chemicals into an oil field to free oil left behind by conventional production methods. The technology is made up of a family of processes that include polymers which divert oil recovery processes away from depleted areas of a reservoir and into more oil-rich zones, and surfactants, or detergent-like chemicals, which break the surface tension that makes oil droplets cling to reservoir rock. To help answer many of the fundamental questions that have limited industry's use of chemical flooding, DOE will award just over $2 million to the University of Kansas Center for Research Inc., the New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research Center, and Prairie View A&M Research Foundation. The three organizations will supply $1.35 million in private sector funding. The DOE funds will be provided by the Bartlesville (OK) Project Office through BDM-Oklahoma, contractor for the agency's National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research. The three projects will focus on the use of polymers. Polymer injection may be particularly attractive as a way to enhance the effectiveness of waterflooding. In the majority of U.S., waterflooding is now underway because primary production, either by natural pressures or the use of pumps, is no longer effective. It can produce another 10% to 20% of the oil left behind by primary production, but over time, its effectiveness drops off as the water finds the easiest, most permeable pathways through the reservoir. Polymers are long-chained molecules that can be injected with the water to block off depleted zones in the reservoir and divert waterfloods to areas where oil remains. Before polymer injection is commercially ready, however, many technical challenges must be overcome. For example, one particular research need is to develop gels that flow easily for several hundred feet into a reservoir, then harden to block water flow. For polymers that follow natural fractures, the set-up time could be only a few days, but for polymers that must flow through the tiny pores in the rock matrix, the time to reach the intended location and harden may be a year or longer. Another research challenge is to develop gels that can seal the more porous sections of a reservoir without damaging or plugging the less permeable sections. Researchers in the three projects announced today are typically university professors assisted by graduate and post-graduate students and by research associates. University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc.The University of Kansas Center for Research, in Lawrence, KS, will use the DOE funding to continue their research on the use of special polymers that create gels in a reservoir. Such gels can be used to block the flow of waterfloods through areas of the reservoir that have already been swept of oil and redirect the flow to zones that still contain producible oil. Research will focus on five areas: using gels in highly fractured reservoirs, gel use in carbonate rocks, using gels in carbon dioxide flooding, gel treatment in production wells, and techniques to harden gels at precise locations several hundred feet into a reservoir. The 30-month project will be headed by Dr. Don Green and Paul Willhite (913- 864-3001). It will receive $754,000 from DOE and $1.05 million in private sector funding. Results will be communicated to independent producers through the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council and the University's Tertiary Oil Recovery Project and through a newsletter mailed to operators in the region. New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research CenterNew Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research Center, a part of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, NM, will also concentrate on the use of gels and other chemical agents to shut off the flow of water through depleted sections of a reservoir. Three major objectives will be pursued in the 30-month project: the identification of blocking agents that can flow readily through reservoir fractures or through small leaks in the well casing or into narrow channels outside the reservoir pipe without damaging low-permeability zones close to the well, techniques for placing these blocking agents in the reservoir where they will be most effective, and determining why some chemicals effectively block water while allowing oil or gas to continue flowing. Dr. Randall Seright (505-835-5571) will head the research team. The project will receive $800,000 in Federal funds and $300,000 in private sector funds. Prairie View A&M Research FoundationSelected as part of an effort to enhance the participation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities or small disadvantaged businesses in the DOE Advanced Oil Recovery Program, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX, will focus on a new family of chemicals for advanced oil recovery that include starches and blends of polymers and starches. These offer potentially lower cost alternatives to other chemicals. Researchers will also study blends of polymers and surfactants. Surfactants are chemicals that make remaining "immobile" oil droplets in the reservoir more soluble in water, allowing them to break away from reservoir rock and move to production wells. The surfactants to be studied by Prairie View researchers exhibit some of the properties of plastics and could also offer producers significant cost savings. At the completion of the 24-month project, an industry-sponsored forum will be convented to transfer results to the private sector and encourage operators to test the prototype products in monitored field operations. The research team will be headed by Dr. Jorge Gabitto (409-857-4215 or 2427) and will receive $466,337 from DOE. -End of TechLine- For More Information: |