A Comprehensive Review of Enhanced Oil Recovery Projects in Canada and Recommendations for Planning Successful Future EOR projects

A database is developed from multiple sources to comprehensively present and evaluate enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in Canada. The datasets comprising of in-situ reserves, corresponding production and EOR information of Canada and worldwide EOR projects are made publicly available on a custom-built interactive data analysis platform TIBCO Spotfire. EOR projects for light, medium and heavy oils in Canada are classified into 65 solvent flooding, 6 polymer flooding and 13 Alkali-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding. Thermal methods, particularly SAGD & CSS are conducted for extra heavy oil and bitumen in oil sands. Another 31 of immiscible flooding projects are also identified. Factors contributing to success of these projects in respective fields are evaluated based on reservoir properties and EOR parameters such as miscibility, wettability, mobility ratio, capillary number, minimum miscibility pressure. With detailed technical analysis, EOR screening criterion for each method is updated and validated with world EOR data as well as Alberta oil pools data of 2019. Primary and secondary flooding projects that have potential for tertiary recovery are matched with historic EOR data to estimate future enhanced production. It has been observed that 257 pools currently employing water flooding have some similarities to fields that have seen success with EOR. Upgrading these primary or secondary projects to enhanced recovery has the potential of increasing daily production by as much as 14%.