News / Oil recovery breakthrough
RESEARCHERS at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, believe to have achieved a breakthrough in developing techniques that would extend the life of existing oil fields in the North Sea.
The university’s Centre for Enhanced Oil Recovery has been working on low salinity water injection techniques that would significantly increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing wells.
The centre’s director Mehran Sohrabi said the technique had the potential to make a huge impact on the output of North Sea oil production.
The research was welcomed by the Scottish Government.
Professor Sohrabi said: “At least half of the original oil still remains in the North Sea reservoirs but there are great challenges in extracting it using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques.
“Following years of research at the university, we now believe we can overcome these challenges.”
Low-salinity water injection works by reducing the salt levels in sea water that is already injected into reservoirs.
Mr Sohrabi said: “It has the potential to make a huge impact on the current output of the North Sea’s oil production.
“We have developed a robust method to screen oil reservoirs to identify the ones that would respond positively to low salinity water injection.
“This allows us to estimate the size of incremental oil recovery, which is vital for economic calculations of enhanced oil recovery projects,” he added.
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