• Daqing (China)

IFP (a member of the EOR Alliance) was contracted in 1985 to perform screening studies for the giant Daqing field (China), the producing at high water-cut following several years of water injection. IFP recommended polymer flooding to increase the production and reduce the water-cut and subsequently performed the geology, reservoir engineering and laboratory studies for the design of two polymer flood pilots (Chauveteau, Combe, & Dong, 1988).

The two pilots proved highly successful (Wang, et al., 1993) (Delamaide, Corlay, & Wang, 1994) and the polymer flood was later extended to the whole field. Daqing is now the largest polymer flood in the world.

  • Pelican Lake (Canada)

IFP (a member of the EOR Alliance) proposed the first polymer flood in a heavy oil reservoir in 1995 in the Pelican Lake field. This thin (5 m average) giant reservoir (6.4 billion barrels OOIP) contains high viscosity oil (over 1,000 cp) and has mostly been produced through primary depletion using horizontal wells. The first pilot failed because of operational issues but a second pilot in 2005 proved highly successful (Delamaide, Zaitoun, Renard, & Tabary, 2013), with the production in the central producer going from less than 10 bopd to over 360 bopd. After almost 8 years of continuous injection the central well in the pilot is still producing over 150 bopd with a water-cut of less than 70%. Following that success the polymer flood has been extended to most of the field, making Pelican Lake the second largest polymer flood in the world after Daqing.

  • Bramberge (Germany)

The Bramberge field in Germany is being waterflooded and producing at high water-cut. The challenges in this reservoir are the large variations in salinity due to a mix between the initial reservoir water (120 g/L TDS) and injection water (33 g/L) as well as the high hardness of the injection water. In spite of this, a surfactant-polymer formulation exhibiting high recovery was developed for the field (Tabary, et al., 2012) and adsorption was reduced to acceptable levels by using appropriate adsorption inhibitors. The project is proceeding and a field pilot is planned.

  • Confidential (Malaysia)

Foam was selected by the operator to improve the performances of a WAG process. A formulation generating a stable foam with goof rheological properties and stability in reservoir conditions was designed (Chabert, et al., 2013). The next step in the process should be a pilot test.