Decide Which Method Fits the Reservoir and Design a Pilot That Answers the Question
EOR Screening & Pilot Design
Applied EOR evaluation, covering remaining oil determination, screening criteria and methodology across chemical gas and thermal processes, laboratory programme design, technical and economic ranking, pilot objectives and configuration, surveillance design, pilot interpretation and the scale-up decision to full field.
EOR Screening & Pilot Design
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EOR Screening & Pilot Design - RE-EORPD-PEA27
| Code | Date | Time | Duration | Location | Currency | Early Bird Fee Per Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RE-EORPD-PEA27 | 14 - 18 Jun 2027 | 10 AM CST | 4 Hours Per Day |
Online |
USD |
4000 |
Boost your team's skills and your budget! Enjoy group discounts for collaborative learning. Send an inquiry to info@peassociations.com.
EOR Screening & Pilot Design
Description
Enhanced recovery projects are expensive, slow to respond and difficult to reverse, which makes the screening and pilot stages disproportionately valuable. Screening narrows a large set of possible methods to the few that suit a given reservoir, using criteria based on fluid properties, rock properties, temperature, salinity, depth, heterogeneity and remaining oil. Piloting then tests the leading candidate in the field at a scale where failure is affordable. Both stages are frequently done poorly, and the consequence is either a full field project that should never have proceeded or a viable opportunity abandoned on a pilot that was not designed to succeed.
This training covers both. Remaining oil determination is developed first, since every EOR evaluation depends on knowing how much oil is left and where it is, and this is harder than it appears. Screening criteria are then developed for each method family, chemical, gas, thermal and others, with the physical reasoning behind each criterion rather than tables to be applied mechanically. Laboratory programme design follows, covering what must be measured to support a decision and what can be deferred. Technical and economic ranking is then addressed. Pilot design is developed in detail: objectives, pattern selection, size, well configuration, injection and production strategy, surveillance and instrumentation, duration and expected response timing. The training closes with pilot interpretation, its common failure modes, and the scale-up decision.
Screening tables are useful and frequently misused. Published criteria for each EOR method give ranges of oil gravity, viscosity, temperature, depth, permeability and salinity within which the method has worked, and they are a reasonable first filter. But they are derived from historical projects, they encode the technology of the time they were compiled, and a reservoir outside a range is not necessarily unsuitable. Understanding why each criterion exists, what it is proxying for, allows a proper assessment rather than a lookup.
Remaining oil saturation is the parameter that decides everything and is measured badly. Volumetric and material balance methods give field averages that say nothing about distribution. Logs give values at wells, which are the locations most likely to have been swept. Single well tracer tests give values within a small radius. Core taken from a swept zone gives good data at one point at high cost. Every EOR evaluation rests on this number, and evaluations that assume a remaining saturation rather than measuring it are building on the weakest possible foundation.
Pilots fail for design reasons more often than for technical ones. A pilot too small relative to well spacing produces a response dominated by injection into the surrounding field rather than the pilot pattern. A pilot without adequate surveillance produces a rate response that cannot be attributed to the process. A pilot run for too short a period ends before the response develops. A pilot in an unrepresentative part of the field answers a question about that part rather than about the field. Each of these has ended programmes that were technically viable.
Finally, the scale-up decision needs to be framed before the pilot starts. A pilot that produces an ambiguous result because nobody defined in advance what success would look like leaves the organisation with data and no decision. Defining the success criteria, the measurements that will establish them and the decision that follows each outcome is part of designing the pilot rather than a subsequent interpretation exercise.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Determine remaining oil saturation using appropriate methods and assess the reliability of each
- Apply screening criteria across chemical, gas, thermal and other EOR methods with understanding of their basis
- Screen a reservoir systematically and shortlist viable methods
- Design laboratory programmes appropriate to the decision stage
- Rank EOR options on technical suitability, incremental recovery, cost and risk
- Define pilot objectives and the success criteria that will support a decision
- Design pilot pattern configuration, size and well arrangement
- Specify pilot surveillance, instrumentation and sampling programmes
- Estimate pilot response timing and required duration
- Interpret pilot results, attribute the response and make a defensible scale-up decision
Organisations sending participants to this training will:
- Screen EOR opportunities across a portfolio consistently and on sound criteria
- Avoid laboratory and study spend on methods that screening should have eliminated
- Design pilots that produce interpretable, decision-supporting results
- Reduce the risk of full field projects proceeding on inadequate evidence
- Avoid abandoning viable opportunities because of poorly designed pilots
- Improve the quality of remaining oil determination underpinning EOR evaluation
Participants will:
- Screen reservoirs for EOR with understanding rather than by table lookup
- Determine and defend a remaining oil saturation estimate
- Design pilots that will answer the question asked of them
- Specify surveillance that allows a response to be attributed
- Interpret pilot results and make a scale-up recommendation
- Build a capability central to mature field development
- Reservoir engineers evaluating improved and enhanced recovery
- Development engineers working on mature field opportunities
- Production engineers supporting EOR pilots
- Simulation engineers modelling EOR processes
- Technical staff screening portfolios for recovery opportunities
- Asset managers deciding on EOR investment
- Consultants and evaluators assessing EOR potential
Module 1 - EOR Context and Recovery Mechanisms
- Primary, secondary and tertiary recovery definitions
- Improved oil recovery and enhanced oil recovery distinctions
- Oil remaining after waterflood: bypassed and residual
- Microscopic displacement and macroscopic sweep efficiency
- Capillary number and its relationship to residual saturation
- Mobility ratio and sweep
- Recovery mechanisms available: mobility control, IFT reduction, viscosity reduction, swelling, wettability alteration
- Method families and their targeted mechanism
- Realistic incremental recovery expectations by method
- Timing of EOR within field life
Module 2 - Remaining Oil Determination
- Why remaining oil saturation governs EOR evaluation
- Volumetric and material balance estimates and their limitations
- Log-derived saturation in swept zones and its bias
- Cased hole saturation logging methods
- Single well chemical tracer tests
- Sponge and pressure coring
- Interwell tracer results and their interpretation
- 4D seismic and saturation change detection
- Simulation-derived remaining oil distribution
- Reconciling estimates from multiple methods
- Mapping remaining oil distribution rather than a field average
- Designing a programme to establish remaining oil
Module 3 - Screening Criteria and Their Basis
- Purpose and limitations of published screening tables
- Oil properties: gravity, viscosity, composition and their criteria
- Reservoir temperature and its constraints on chemicals
- Depth and pressure criteria for miscible processes
- Permeability and its criteria for polymer and thermal methods
- Formation water salinity and hardness constraints
- Clay content and mineralogy constraints
- Reservoir thickness and its thermal significance
- Heterogeneity, continuity and barrier effects
- Understanding what each criterion proxies for
- Assessing reservoirs that fall outside published ranges
Module 4 - Method Screening by Family
- Waterflood optimisation and improved waterflooding as the first option
- Polymer flooding screening criteria
- Surfactant and ASP screening criteria
- Miscible gas injection screening: CO2, hydrocarbon, nitrogen
- Immiscible gas injection screening
- WAG applicability
- Thermal method screening: CSS, steamflood, SAGD, in situ combustion
- Low salinity and smart water screening
- Microbial and other methods
- Combination and hybrid processes
- Comparative screening across method families
Module 5 - Laboratory Programme Design
- Matching laboratory scope to decision stage
- Screening stage laboratory work
- Formulation and optimisation stage work
- Fluid and rock sample requirements and representativeness
- Core selection, preservation and restoration
- Standard tests by method family
- Core flood design and what it can establish
- Test conditions and their match to reservoir conditions
- Laboratory cost, duration and scheduling
- Interpreting laboratory results and their field extrapolation
- Deciding when laboratory work is sufficient to support a field decision
Module 6 - Technical and Economic Ranking
- Incremental recovery estimation by method
- Simulation-based prediction and its uncertainty
- Analogue-based estimation and its use
- Capital cost components by method
- Operating cost: chemicals, energy, facilities, water
- Timing of response and its economic effect
- Discounting, oil price sensitivity and breakeven analysis
- Technical risk assessment by method
- Implementation and operational complexity
- Facility modification requirements
- Multi-criteria ranking and its documentation
- Selecting the method to pilot
Module 7 - Pilot Objectives and Configuration
- Defining what a pilot must establish
- Objectives: technical feasibility, recovery, operability, cost, design parameters
- Success criteria defined before the pilot starts
- Pilot location selection and representativeness
- Confined and unconfined pilot configurations
- Pattern selection, size and well count
- Inverted patterns and their advantages
- Single well pilots and their limitations
- New wells against conversion of existing wells
- Injection and production strategy for the pilot
- Pilot cost and its proportion of the full field cost
Module 8 - Pilot Surveillance and Instrumentation
- Baseline data acquisition before the pilot
- Production and injection allocation for pilot wells
- Pressure monitoring and observation wells
- Saturation logging before, during and after
- Tracer programmes: interwell and single well
- Fluid sampling and chemical analysis
- 4D seismic and other monitoring options
- Data acquisition frequency and duration
- Attributing the response to the process rather than to other changes
- Control patterns and their value
- Surveillance cost and its justification
Module 9 - Interpretation and Scale-Up
- Expected response timing and pilot duration requirements
- Interpreting production response and separating it from decline
- Chemical and tracer breakthrough interpretation
- Estimating incremental recovery from pilot data
- Scaling pilot recovery to full field and its pitfalls
- Confinement effects and their correction
- Simulation matching of the pilot and its use in scale-up
- Operational lessons and their effect on full field design
- Common reasons pilots produce ambiguous results
- Making the scale-up decision against the predefined criteria
- Staged implementation as an alternative to a single scale-up decision
- Documenting the pilot and its conclusions
Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.
Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.
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