In efforts to increase and extend production from oil and gas fields, as well as to keep wells operational, petroleum engineers pump a wide variety of fluids into the subsurface. Fluids are injected into petroleum reservoirs for a number of purposes, including: • Waterflooding, where an available fresh or saline water is injected into the reservoir to displace oil toward producing wells. • Improved Oil Recovery (IOR), where a range of more exotic fluids such as steam (hot water), caustic solutions, carbon dioxide, foams, polymers, surfactants, and so on are injected to improve recovery beyond what might be obtained by waterflooding alone. • Near-well treatments, in which chemicals are injected into producing and sometimes injector wells, where they are intended to react with the reservoir rock. Well stimulation techniques such as acidization, for example, are intended to increase the formation's permeability. Alternatively, producing wells may receive “squeeze treatments” in which a mineral scale inhibitor is injected into the formation. In this case, the treatment is designed so that the inhibitor sorbs onto mineral surfaces, where it can gradually desorb into the formation water during production. • Pressure management, where fluid is injected into oil fields in order to maintain adequate fluid pressure in reservoir rocks. Calcium carbonate may precipitate as mineral scale, for example, if pressure is allowed to deteriorate, especially in fields where formation fluids are rich in Ca++ and HCO3- and CO2 fugacity is high. In each of these procedures, the injected fluid can be expected to be far from equilibrium with sediments and formation waters. As such, it is likely to react extensively once it enters the formation, causing some minerals to dissolve and others to precipitate. Hutcheon (1984) appropriately refers to this process as “artificial diagenesis,” drawing an analogy to the role of groundwater flow in the diagenesis of natural sediments (see Chapter 19). Further reaction is likely if the injected fluid breaks through to producing wells and mixes there with formation waters. There is considerable potential, therefore, for mineral scale, such as barium sulfate (see the next section), to form during these procedures.
Overview of Polymers for Improved Oil Recovery Treatments
