EOR Screening Including Technical,Operational,Environmental andEconomic Factors Reveals Practical EOR Potential Offshore on theNorwegian Continental Shelf

摘要

We present a novel advanced EOR screening approach,adding to an existing technical screening toolkitpowerful new practical discriminators based on:(1)Operational complexity of converting existing offshorefields to new EOR processes;(2)Environmental acceptability of each EOR process,given current fieldconfiguration;(3)Commercial attractiveness and competitiveness.We apply the new approach to 14 EORprocesses across 85 reservoirs from 46 oilfields and discoveries on the offshore Norwegian ContinentalShelf(NCS).When the operational,environmental and economic thresholds were included,45% of the technicalopportunities were screened out,and the overall potential recovery increment was ~280 MSm~3(millionstandard cubic metres),the top processes being HC miscible,low salinity/polymer,low salinity,CO2miscible,gels.Excluding environmental factors(i.e.,assuming environmental issues could be solved by newtechnologies),the increment is ~340 MSm~3,indicating a ~60 MSm~3 prize for research into environmentallybenign EOR methods.The economic thresholds used here were intentionally set low enough to eliminateonly severely commercially challenged opportunities;using higher commercially competitive thresholdswould reduce the overall volumes by a further ~40 MSm~3.The extension of EOR screening to include operational,environmental and economic criteria is notintended as a substitute for in-depth studies of these factors,but it should help stakeholders make earlierand better-informed decisions about selection of individual EOR opportunities for deeper study,leading topiloting and eventual field-scale deployment.Revealing the sensitivity of each EOR process to operational,environmental and economic factors will also help focus R&D onto the practical,as well as technical,barriers to EOR implementation.