What is IOR?
IOR is an acronym for Improved Oil Recovery that is commonly used to describe any process, or combination of processes, that may be applied to economically increase the cumulative volume of oil that is ultimately recovered from the reservoir at an accelerated rate. IOR may include chemical, mechanical, physical, or procedural processes.
IOR may also include EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) processes. EOR is used to mobilize and recover that percentage of residual oil that cannot be captured by waterflooding alone, or by the use of physical, mechanical, or procedural processes. EOR technologies are specifically designed to affect mostly the immobile oil that remains in the reservoir, while IOR strategies can be used to recover more of the remaining mobile oil and/or immobile oil. A few of the most commonly used EOR technologies include gas processes like nitrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2), thermal processes like steam and fire-flooding, and a variety of chemical processes that include surfactant, surfactant-polymer (S-P), and alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP), to name a few.
Eclipse specializes in chemical processes that are used to recover a higher percentage of both the mobile and immobile oil that remains in the reservoir. Therefore, our overall IOR strategy may or may not employ the use of EOR. If the percentage of the residual oil saturation is not high, then it is unlikely that EOR processes will be used in the overall IOR strategy. Chemical processes offered by Eclipse include, but are not limited to:
- mobility control polymer flooding
- polymer gels applied to producing oil and gas wells to reduce unwanted water
- polymer gels applied to water and/or CO2 injection wells to improve sweep efficiency by modifying conformance and injection profile
- surfactant and alkaline (caustic) chemicals that are used to mobilize and recover the residual oil saturation from the reservoir
- chemicals to improve the injectivity of water in low permeability waterflood reservoirs
- chemicals to prevent and possibly remedy problems associated with clays
Eclipse takes the time to study and gain familiarity with your reservoir to determine if it could benefit from chemical IOR/EOR technologies. If we conclude that it is indeed a candidate, then we apply unique strategies that reveal to us those areas of the reservoir that have the greatest need and provide the most potential for a successful project. Our assessment may tell us that the entire reservoir is in need of a specific technology(s) or that only one or more specific wells are in need of our help. Our time-tested and field-tested approach tells us which one of, how much of, and for how long a given chemical must be used and how much the expected cost/benefit to our customer will be.
