Enhanced Oil Recovery
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Solutions
Boost Productivity With Dow EOR Solutions
Dow is pioneering the next generation of surfactants and other solutions that improve the performance of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods in mature reservoirs, including miscible gas flooding, thermal methods such as steam flooding and steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), and improved water flooding such as wettability alternation and chemical EOR.
These methods hold the potential to boost productivity significantly, with minimal environmental impact. With a strong innovative R&D portfolio, Dow is poised to help operators maintain a productive edge for years to come.
Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery
Primary and secondary production methods can leave up to 70-80% of the original oil in the reservoir in place. Techniques to improve oil recovery (EOR) have been developed over the years to increase product and reservoir life.
With an extensive background and experience in polymer chemistry and surfactants for use in oil product, Dow is at the forefront of the Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR) evolution. We offer a broad portfolio of these solutions to individual field conditions to help producers get the most out of their assets.
ELEVATETM Miscible Gas Flood Foam Solutions
Miscible Gass Flooding of supercritical gases is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique that is simple and effective. Its popularity is founded on its low risk and its low cost. However low sweep efficiencies due to reservoir heterogeneity and gas density keep oil recovery efficiency lower than desired. Dow offers a distinct solution shown to meet those challenges by combining the innovative chemistry of ELEVATETM Foam Conformance Solution with Dow’s imiplementation expertise, operators can reach and recover more oil from existing wells, while simultaneously reducing operating expenditures.
High-Temperature Additives for Thermal EOR
Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) particularly steam processes, suffer from conformance and mobility control. In addition, the condenses water is not a good solvent for oil and therefore does fully recover the oil trapped in tighter and smaller pores.
Dow is developing solutions to combat both problems – ELEVATETM Steam Foam Additives to control conformance issues in steam floods and hot spots in SAGD, as well as ELEVATE SAGE Steam Oil Ratio (SOR) Improvement Additives to improve the efficiency of SAGE operations. ELEVATE Additives are focused on increasing the oil production rate, increased total oil recovery over time and decreasing steam to oil ratios.
Combined with Dow’s implementation expertise, backed by decades of experience in additives for use in oil production, these products will help recover more oil while significantly reducing water and energy use.
Water Treatment Options for Enhanced Oil Recovery Operations
Water and steam are used extensively in EOR processes to heat and displace crude oil and reduce its viscosity. This results in large quantities of water that must be treated before disposing or reuse. Dow is the world’s largest manufacturer of reverse osmosis water purification membranes and ion exchange resis and a leading provider of ultrafiltration membranes and electrodeionization products, an excellent choice for use in the treatment of brine water by product to meet crucial environmental regulations. Dow also has a full product line of water treatment additives to ensure optional water system performance.