The Effect Of Oil Recovery On The Economy

The first of three pillars that make up the oil and gas industry in Canada is the upstream sector, which is comprised of

Canada’s oil sands are among the largest oil reserves in the word. This is evident from the fact that Canada is ranked third for the largest oil reserve in the world, after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia (“Oil Sands,” n.d.). “Oil sand”, is a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen (Gosselin et al., 2010). It is a very dense and extremely viscous oil that must be treated before it can be used to produce usable fuels such as gasoline and diesel (Gosselin et al., 2010). In North America, high oil prices, growing demand, and diminishing oil reserves results in greater interest to mine local oil reserves. Increased production of oil generates significant economic benefits but, at the same time, the development of the oil sands

The Eagle Ford shale formation in south Texas has recently become the focus of many oil industry operators searching for new sources of hydrocarbons by using the latest technology in previously unexplored areas. This exploration enhances the development of even more advanced techniques as issues are identified and problems solved to address the unique properties of the formation and the surrounding surface environment. Even though a formation may be comprised of a single sedimentary layer from a similar geological time frame it is not a homogeneous block and has many features and anomalies that effect the pressure, permeability, type of hydrocarbons trapped and methods required to extract them. To understand these properties one must understand that shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock that forms from the compaction of silt and clay placing it in the mudstone category of rocks [1]. Shale is different from other rocks in this category because it has a fissile structure and is laminated. The black shale in the Eagle Ford formation (Fig 1.) has a special property such that it contained organic material when it was deposited and during compaction over a millennium, the organic materials were converted into trapped oil and gas hydrocarbon deposits. This oil and gas are very difficult to remove because it is trapped within tiny pore spaces and or adsorbed onto clay mineral particles that makeup the shale.

Affected habitats of the shoreline identified by SCAT teams: sand beaches, coastal marshes, man-made structures. In the event of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an estimated 4.2 million feet of containment boom and 9.1 million feet of sorbent boom were used making this the largest boom deployment in response effort history (British Petroleum, 2010). Oil contained in rigid booms was then subjected to conventional skimming in which the surface water was moved

The oil industry in the United States is booming. However, not all oil or natural gasses are available by drilling. There are some oils and gasses trapped inside shale rock. To access these gases, a process called Hydraulic Fracturing, informally known as fracking, was invented. Hydraulic Fracking “is a controversial oil and gas extraction technique developed in the late 1940s to gain access to fossil energy deposits previously inaccessible to drilling operations. The process…literally involves the smashing of rock with millions of gallons of water- along with sand and an undisclosed assortment of chemicals in order to bring gas to the surface. (serc-carelton.edu).” This process combines water, sand, and chemicals

The purpose of this paper is to explain the depositional environment, petrology, mineralogy, structure, exploration, technology, methods of extraction and processing, as well as the applications and economics of oil in the Greater Green River Basin. This paper will mainly focus on the oil shale within the basin but will also touch on some of the more conventional oil and gas plays as well. According to Crawford and Killen (2010), Oil Shale is defined as being “a sedimentary rock embedded with organic material called kerogen… and has not been under the necessary heat, pressure, and/or depth for the right length of time to form crude oil”. Oil shale is typically found in silica and carbonate based rocks that are usually no greater than 900

uncomplicated area to study oils. In the Canadian and American parts of the Williston Basin occur

Hydraulic fracturing is a verified as well as well-regulated technology that was first used during the 1940s. Hydraulic fracturing has opened enormous new supplies of oil along with clean-burning natural gas that is from the dense deposits of shale. These supplies enhance the energy security of the U.S. and improve the nation’s ability to generate electricity for generations to come. Hydraulic Fracturing has been utilized in at least one million wells in the U.S., and it has securely produced at least seven billion oil barrels as well as natural gas that is about 600 trillion cubic feet (Gallegos & Varela 13). Hydraulic fracturing has a wide array of benefits that range from

Engineering is key in modern society today and we strive to make everything better and better each day. One of the most highly credited fields of engineering would have to be none other than Petroleum Engineering. An education in petroleum engineering provides a wide spectrum of specialties to keep the industry running. These are reservoir engineering, drilling engineering, and production engineering to name a few. A reservoir engineer determines the oil in place and devises the most appropriate technology to produce the oil within the prevailing economic environment. Advanced reservoir simulators provide computer models that could predict the performance of the recovery techniques over a period of many years in future. Reservoir engineers

Change in oil saturation is represented as percent of original oil in place. After water flooding, the remaining oil saturation in the sand-pack was around 66%. Since the water saturation also effect the performance of the foam/PEF, all the tertiary recovery (foam/PEF) were performed around similar water saturation [41]. The weak foaming solutions resulted in a lower apparent viscosity of foam within porous media. For N85 surfactant solution, foam generation was unsuccessful up to 10 PV of SAG injections. After oil bank production, the rate of foam collapse may have been much higher than that of foam generation that resulted in no pressure build up and therefore stable foam did not propagate through porous media. The addition of polymer into N85 surfactant solution slightly increased the apparent viscosity and resulted in N85-PEF propagation. On the other hand, in the case of DDBS foaming solution, foam could generate and propagate through porous media faster than N85-PEF. This again shows the importance of selecting a proper foaming agent. In addition to a strong foaming agent, polymer significantly improved the foam propagation through heavy oil saturated porous media. Considering DDBS-PEF curve, PEF started to propagate right after oil bank production. It reached to steady state foam injection where almost entire sand-pack was occupied by PEF. At this point, the pressure drop value should be almost similar to that of water-saturated sand-pack at steady state (stage III)

Water and polymer flooding have seen a surge in older fields as a method of extracting bypassed hydrocarbons in the secondary production phase of the reservoir. Typically, the floods have seen the largest increase of EUR in reservoirs that have highly mobile fluids and with a high permeability formation. This allows the fluids to rapidly move through the formation and push the desired hydrocarbons towards our production wells. These reservoirs are typically in the form of deeper sandstone reservoirs, but studies are being conducted in an attempt to implement the floods in other reservoir types. Through this paper we will evaluate the needs of an EOR process in carbonate formations to evaluate their potential implementation in the Darst Creek Oil Field in Luling, Texas. The evaluation will evaluate studies of flood effectiveness in other carbonate reservoirs to evaluate both the operational and theoretical constraints of this specific

Peak oil is described as the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, and at this point we assist to a diminution of the resource. Oil is one of the world 's most vital resource, we use it in every aspect of our daily lives, we use it for electricity, gasoline and even drugs. The disappearance of this resource can lead to a major global disaster. In an attempt to identify the potential impact of such a disaster and find alternatives energetic resources, a cloud of researchers started to focus their research around this topic. While the first researches made on peak oil where mostly focused on its plausibility, nowadays researches concentrate on determining the exact period of occurrence, as well as the economic and political impact of this event.

Use SCBEU units at bitumen and oil sand sites to ‘extract and upgrade’ at the site. The SCBEU unit would replace much of the current oil sand solvent extraction washing process and does not require solvent recovery or disposal (4,5,9,10,11,12,25,28). [This case will be developed in this proposal using the Arroyo Grande Bitumen site near Edna, CA. (26,27,28)]

In the first part, I will describe the two main parts of the first stage which is, locating the oil field and the drilling operations.

This process is very efficient, and it produces great amounts of oil, usually greater than the first phase of recovery. However, the injected water doesn’t mix with the present oil in the reservoir, it only pushes out the free particles and bypasses the other ones that are trapped or attached to the rocks, leaving 50 to 70%of the available oil in the reservoir.