T04: Polymer Flooding: From Theory to Practice
Instructor:
Koorosh Asghari, PhD., Associate Professor, University of Regina
Who should attend:
Reservoir, enhanced recovery, development and exploitation engineers and engineering technologists. Also suitable for geologists and management involved with enhanced oil recovery methods.
Tutorial Description:
Tutorial Description: The polymer flooding process is based on the addition of small amounts of polymer molecules to injected water, which increases the viscosity and improves the mobility ratio between the injected fluid and the oil in a reservoir. This improves the volumetric sweep efficiency of the flood, and leads to recovering additional oil. This tutorial provides participants with a background on enhanced oil recovery technologies and specific analysis of polymer flooding. The emphasis is divided between how polymer flooding improves oil recovery over waterflooding, and the impact of various field and operating conditions on polymer flooding. This material is presented in the following order:
- Defining EOR
- Current standing of various EOR processes in the world
- Basic principles of oil recovery during waterflooding
- Principals and mechanisms of polymer flooding
- Design considerations and field implementation of polymer flooding
- North American and international field experience
- Micellar-polymer flooding
Instructor Biography:
Koorosh Asghari is an Associate Professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Regina. Dr. Asghari received a B.Sc. degree in chemical engineering and an M.Sc. degree in reservoir engineering from Iran . He received a Ph.D. degree in chemical and petroleum engineering from the University of Kansas in 1999. Dr. Asghari's current research interests include polymer flooding, permeability modification and in-depth gel placement for reducing excess water production from oil and gas formations, reservoir characterization and simulation, optimization of CO
2 storage and enhanced oil recovery and risk assessment of the long-term storage of CO
2 in geological formations. Dr. Asghari is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineers and the Petroleum Society of CIM.
