Courtesy of salympetroleum.com

Within the enhanced oil recovery pilot project based on injection of the three-component mixture of alkali, surfactant, and polymer (ASP) Salym Petroleum Development (SPD) has produced 3,000 t of oil. This was the production target set by SPD at the start of project execution. Oil recovery factor of the pilot area has reached 67% (of those, incremental effect from ASP injection is 15%). SPD is going to keep producing incremental oil until the end of the pilot project planned in the end of Q1 2018.

SPD CEO Alexey Govzich commented: “Today we can say with a high level of confident that from technical perspective ASP pilot is successful. We have proved that this enhanced oil recovery technology has been efficient in conditions of Western Siberian oil province. We are currently gathering and analysing the information obtained during the pilot project, and will present the results of the project to our shareholders and key representatives of state authorities soon. These results will demonstrate advantages of such highly effective oil recovery methods, and its large-scale development needs a revision of the existing taxation system.”

“By design we chose a fully watered-out part of the field for the experiment. During the pilot a watercut of central producing wells has decreased from 98% to 92% with the minimum value of 88%. These results confirm that ASP technology can be successfully applied in the Salym group of oil fields as well as in other mature oil fields”, told Yakov Volokitin, SPD Petroleum Engineering Manager.

ASP is a promising enhanced oil recovery method based on chemical formation flooding with a three component mixture (alkali, surfactant, and polymer). It becomes possible to enhance oil recovery factor by injecting a composition of certain chemicals into the well. Surfactant reduces interfacial tension of oil, while alkali influences the electric charge of rock, which in its turn reduces surfactant loss. Polymer is applied to enhance solution viscosity. The technology has already been actively applied in the USA, Canada, and China; pilot testing is performed in several other countries. SPD has been studying this technology since 2008. The company has already run several laboratory and field tests. In 2012 SPD shareholders approved execution of the pilot ASP project. SPD has drilled seven new wells and constructed ASP mixing plant, dedicated pipeline, Emulsion Treatment Unit and several other operating infrastructure facilities.

Salym Petroleum Development N.V. (SPD) is a Joint Venture set up in 1996 with a view to develop the Salym group of oilfields in Western Siberia. SPD shareholders on a 50:50 basis are Shell Salym Development B.V. and Gazprom Neft.

Source: salympetroleum.com