Economically and Environmentally Sustainable Enhanced Oil Recovery

M. R. Islam

• Publisher: Wiley-Scrivener
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781119479093
• eBook ISBN: 9781119479277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy

There have been many books on the topic of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) over the last 100 years. They all, however, focus on how to recover more oil faster, taking a rather myopic approach. The solutions presented all work fantastically in theory and even in the laboratory, but each fails to produce results in the field with long-term success. The petroleum industry is almost resigned to the belief that for an EOR technique to be successful, it must be propped up with public funds or must compromise environmental integrity. In line with modern engineering practices, previous books discuss how existing technologies can be tweaked to accommodate for any shortcomings that just came to light. This book is unlike any other book on the topic of recovery in particular and engineering in general.

This groundbreaking volume is a continuation of the author's and his research group's work that started publishing on the subject of global sustainability involving energy and the environment, dating back to early 2000s. Starting with a paradigm shift in engineering that involves a long-term focus, rather than looking for short-term solutions, the methods and theories presented here delve into applying green engineering and zero waste principles to EOR.

Historically, EOR has received mixed success, mainly because innovations in these disciplines relied heavily on processed materials, which are both uneconomical and toxic to the environment. This book explains how engineers missed entirely the causes of unsustainability in these technologies due to the prevalence of many myths that are embedded in modern engineering. Once these myths are deconstructed, the appropriate technologies emerge and the merits of them both in terms of economic and environmental benefits become clear.

The book reveals how previous practices in EOR can be replaced with their sustainable versions while saving in material costs. A number of innovative technologies are introduced that can render well known technologies, such as steam flood, in situ combustion, chemical flooding, and microbial EOR environmentally sustainable and economically attractive. A triple dividend is received once these technologies are applied in otherwise marginal reservoirs, unconventional plays and even abandoned formations. The overall reserve, which reflects recoverable oil with new technologies, goes up drastically. Further benefits are drawn when processes such as value addition of waste material is performed.

Overall this book shows how EOR can be rendered green while increasing the profitability. This is in stark contrast to the past practices that considered environmental integrity as a drain on profitability. This book proves that a paradigm shift can turn a "technological disaster" into a technological marvel.

1
Introduction

1.1 Opening Remarks

There have been many books on the topic of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) over the entire period of the plastic era, which spans over 100 years. Each book brings in incremental knowledge of how to recover more oil faster. They all follow the same approach – the approach that maximizes profit in the shortest possible term. This book is unlike any other book on the topic; petroleum engineering, of all disciplines, does not need another book on how to calculate minimum miscibility pressure. This book does not lecture on how to make calculations; rather, it presents how to make fundamental changes in a culture that has produced what Nobel laureate Chemist Robert Curl called a ‘technological disaster’.

1.2 The Prophets of the Doomed Turned Into Scientists

For well over a century, the world has been hearing that we are about to run out of fossil fuel in matter of decades. First it happened with coal. In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England’s factories would grind to a standstill. Today, after over 150 years of Jevons’ prediction of the impending disaster, US EIA predicts that the coal reserve will last another 325 years, based on U.S. coal production in 2017, the ‘recoverable coal’ reserves would last about 325 years (EIA, 2018c).

When it comes to petroleum, as early as 1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted, “The world will run out of oil in 10 years” (quoted by Eberhart, 2017). Later, the US Department of Interior chimed in, claiming that “the world would run out of oil in 13 years” (quoted by Eberhart, 2017). Obviously, the world has not run out of oil, the world, however, has been accustomed to the same “doomsday warning” and whooped it up as ‘settled science’ (Speight and Islam, 2016). Starting with Zatzman and Islam’s (2007) work, this theme of ‘running out of oil’ has been deconstructed and over a decade later, the actual settled science has become the fact that it’s not a matter of if falsehoods are perpetrated it is a mater of why. In 2018a, Islam et al. made it clear that the entire matter is an economic decision, concocted to increase short-term profit. Science, let alone the science of sustainability, cannot be based on falsehood and deception.

It is the same story about ‘concerns’ of climate change and the hysteria that followed. All studies miraculously confirmed something scientists were paid to do whip up decades ago (Islam and Khan, 2019). Now that that ‘science’ has matured into settled science, carbon has become the enemy and the ‘carbon tax’ a universal reality.

If anything good came out of centuries of New Science, it is the fact that this ‘science’ and these scientists cannot be relied upon as a starting point (paradigm) for future analysis because each of those tracks will end up with paradoxes and falsehoods that would reveal themselves only as a matter of time.

1.3 Paradigm Shift in Sustainable Development

Both terms, ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘sustainability’ have been grossly misused in recent years. Paradigm shift, a phrase that was supposed to mean a different starting point (akin to the Sanskrit word, _{आमूलम}, Amulam, meaning ‘from the beginning’) has repeatedly and necessarily used the same starting point as the William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882), John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) the two most prominent alarmist of our time, both of whom were inspired by Adam Smith (1723-1790), the ‘father of Capitalism’ and virtually added nothing beyond what Adam Smith purported as the ‘ultimate truth’. Scientists, in the meantime, followed suit with regurgitating Atomism (a doctrine originally started by Democritus), recycled by Newton in name of New Science. The loop was completed when engineers blindly followed that science and defined ‘sustainability’ in a way that would satisfy politicians, whose primary interest lies in maintaining status quo – the antonym of progress. It is no surprise, therefore, our survey from over decade ago revealed that there is not a single technology that is sustainable (Chhetri and Islam, 2008). That leaves no elbow room for petroleum engineering to survive, let alone to thrive. Unsurprisingly, even petroleum companies have resigned to the ‘settled science’ that carbon is the enemy and petroleum resources have no place in our civilization (Islam et al., 2012; Islam and Khan, 2019).

The current book is a continuation of our research group’s work that started publishing on the subject of global sustainability involving energy and environment, dating back to early 2000s. In terms of the research monograph, we started the paradigm shift from economics, the driver of modern civilization, aptly characterized as the brainchild of Adam Smith. When our book, Economics of Intangibles (Zatzman and Islam, 2007) was published, it was perhaps the first initiatives to recognize the role of intangibles in economics and eventually all science and engineering. At that time, the very concept of intangibles in Economics was perceived to be an oxymoron. Ten years later, it became recognized as a natural process (Website 5), and a recognized branch of economics (Website 6). Now we know that without this approach, we cannot solve a single paradox. For that matter, economics is a branch that has the most number of paradoxes among all disciplines. It is quite revealing that after publishing some dozen of research monographs on the topic on sustainability in energy and environment, there had to be an encore of the original work on Economics to present specifically economics of sustainable energy (Islam et al., 2018a) – a book that solved all major paradoxes, included many cited by Nobel laureate economists.

By adequately introducing a paradigm shift in economic consideration, new features to sustainability could be invoked. When the concept of intangibles is introduced to fundamental engineering analysis, ‘zero-waste’ production becomes a reality. There again, when we introduced the concept of zero-waste as distinct from waste minimization over a decade ago, it was met with scepticism (Khan and Islam, 2012; Chhetri and Islam, 2008). Even the academics couldn’t stomach the concept that rocked the foundation of their long-term belief that waste can only be minimized and sustainability is a matter of adding another means to cover up the immediate consequences of the ‘toxic shock’, which no doubt made a lot of money for those who initiated it, leaving behind a ‘technological disaster’. Today, zero-waste engineering is accepted as a frontier of sustainable development (Khan and Islam, 2016).

Perhaps the biggest shock was when our research group introduced the concept of Green Petroleum in mid 2000’s. When our books on Green Petroleum (Islam et al., 2010; Islam et al., 2012) were introduced to the general readership, the phrase Green Petroleum was considered to be an oxymoron. The word ‘green’ was reserved for renewable energy sources – something we deemed to be unsustainable (Chhetri and Islam, 2008). Ever since that pioneering work, the world has become more accustomed to the phrase ‘Green Petroleum’ although petroleum engineers remain clueless about how to fight against the ‘carbon is the enemy’ mantra that has swept the entire globe outside of the 3% scientists, who are marginalized as ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘creationists’, etc. In defence of the 97% alarmists, the 3% never talked about real science, instead resorting to denying climate change altogether (Islam and Khan, 2019). The biggest victim of this saga has been real science and real engineering. Today, when petroleum engineers talk about sustainable development, they mean coupling with biosurfactants, or generating some energy with solar or wind power. They have all but forgotten petroleum itself is 100% natural and that if a paradigm of ‘nature is sustainable’ - a time honoured principle that has millennia of history to back it up, there is nothing more sustainable than petroleum itself.

With that paradigm shift, our research group was able to debunk the following myths, some of which are in the core of every technology of modern era.

Myth 1: Natural resources are limited, human greed is infinity;

Myth 2: There is no universal standard for sustainability, therefore, total sustainability is a myth;

Myth 3: Environmental integrity must come with a cost and compromise with cost effectiveness must be made;

Myth 4: Human intervention is limited to adding artificial or synthetic chemicals;

Myth 5: 3 R’s (Reduce, Recycle, Reuse) is the best we can do;

Myth 6: Energy and mass are separable, meaning mass has no role in energy transfer;

Myth 7: All physical changes are reversible and original state can be restored as long as external features are...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Petroleum in the Big Picture
• 3 Natural Resources of the Earth
• 4 Growth Potential of Petroleum Reservoirs
• 5 Fundamentals of Reservoir Characterization in View of Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery
• 6 Future Potential of Enhanced Oil Recovery
• 7 Greening of Enhanced Oil Recovery
• 8 Toward Achieving Total Sustainability EOR Operations
• 9 Conclusions
• References and Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement