The term ‘enhanced oil recovery’ (EOR) refers to the technology used to extract crude oil that cannot be extracted through conventional technologies from oil reservoirs. It is also termed as tertiary recovery process as it takes place after primary and secondary oil recoveries. Oil extracted via primary recovery accounts for 5% to 15% of the total reservoir while secondary recovery can extract about 20% to 60% of the total oil present in the reservoir. By installing enhanced oil recovery technology, 35% to 75% oil can easily be extracted from the oil reservoir.
Enhanced oil recovery method is widely being adopted by the oil & gas market participants for their aged and newly explored wells. In addition, new technologies are being developed to improve the efficiency of the enhanced oil recovery technique. GCC is one of the mature oil extractors and has quite a good number of aged oil wells. To extract the proved reserves, oil extraction companies are pushing the use of enhanced oil recovery in existing oil wells. Besides, a number of new methods are being developed in the market such as chemical enhanced oil recovery to reduce the cost of oil recovery.
On the basis of technology, enhanced oil recovery market in GCC can be broadly categorised as thermal enhanced oil recovery, gas/CO2 enhanced oil recovery, and chemical enhanced oil recovery. Thermal enhanced oil recovery technology consumes hot water and steam to stimulate the extraction of crude oil from the reservoir. Old oil wells of GCC, with heavy and viscous oil flow are adopting this technique on a larger scale. The commonly used steam injection enhanced oil recovery methods are cyclic steam stimulation (CSS), steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and steam flooding. Gas injection enhanced oil recovery utilises CO2. Therefore, it also solves the greenhouse gas disposal issue. Growing regulatory norms of GCC to...