INTRODUCTION

Oil and Gas refers to the naturally occurring liquid and natural gas specifically made up of long chain hydrocarbons and various organic compounds found beneath the surface of the earth in entrapments called reservoirs; the presence of oil and gas in these reservoirs is the reason humans survive everyday and carry out their daily activities effectively. Different activities are usually carried out to ensure that the oil and gas present in the reservoirs continue to support humans through their day-to-day activities; such activities include exploration, development, production and finally, abandonment and reclamation. This process is what is referred to as “the oil and gas process”. On completion of this process, numerous …show more content…
EOR methods involving the use of polymers usually yield a recovery range of ~6% to ~30%. When these chemicals are injected into the reservoir, the oil that is trapped there is released thus it can flow freely into the production wells. Furthermore, “polymers help increase the effectiveness of water-floods and boost the efficiency of surfactants” (Duncan, Ferguson, Sudip and Neptune, 2011). The use of polymers in chemical injection further helps to enhance the competence of the surfactants and also the efficiency of the water flooding; to be precise, water soluble polymers are best used for this process. The polymer that is regularly utilised during the process is the partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide and with development in technology, the quality has improved over time. In order to achieve the best results from the chemical injection process, there are certain characteristics that need to be in place. These characteristics include “high remaining oil saturation, low water-flood residual saturation, high permeability and porosity, high polymer concentration and slug size, fresh water and soft water and reservoir temperatures of less than 220F” (Gary, 2007). Favourable characteristics are not limited to these that have just been mentioned but if these characteristics are present, then the expected recovery from the reservoir in question would be satisfactory as up to ~30% recovery is achievable. Moreover,