50 billion barrels of oil waiting for EOR in offshore areas?

Kevin Watts, director of Enhanced Oil Recovery Business Development for Linde LLC, will lead a workshop on the potential for enhanced oil recovery techniques in deep water environments at this year’s Society of Petroleum Engineers Symposium on Improved and Enhanced Oil Recovery in Offshore Environments.

 

50 billion barrels of oil waiting for EOR in offshore areas
50 billion barrels of oil waiting for EOR in offshore areas

The symposium will be held at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, California, August 20-21.

“Worldwide, there are at least 50 billion barrels of oil recoverable by enhanced oil recovery methods for offshore oil reservoirs,” said Watts. “Up until now, gas injection for EOR has proven successful onshore but in only limited applications offshore. We believe, however, that nitrogen will prove to be the gas of choice for offshore EOR in the coming years because of its availability and lower costs.”
Watts will speak at the session “Enabling Technologies for Offshore IOR/EOR Application” on Thursday, August 21 at 1:00 pm.

He will provide details on some of Linde’s major offshore projects and introduce potential solutions using enhanced recovery methods to possibly capture the extensive offshore reserves. Watts also plans to outline just where the major reserves exist as well as the economics of using nitrogen in the enhanced recovery process. “Linde is a leader in offshore nitrogen injection projects and is always looking at new solutions for bringing industrial gas offshore for EOR,” said Watts.

At the workshop, Watts will also highlight:
• Linde’s massive enhanced oil recovery project in the Cantarell oil field complex in the Bay of Campeche for the Mexican state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
• The world’s first CO2 separation from a well-stream that is re-injected back to the well to enhance natural gas production in Hammerfest, Norway.