Using the EORI Scoping Tool to Assess the Potential
Suitability of a Wyoming
Oil Field for Enhanced Oil Recovery
Klaas van
't Veld1, J. Michael Boyles2, Brian Towler3,
Ahmet Ergenc3, and Charles Mason3.
(1) Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute, University of Wyoming,
Laramie, WY 82071, phone: (307) 766-3143, [email protected], (2) Enhanced Oil
Recovery Institute, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, (3) Enhanced Oil
Recovery Institute, University of Wyoming, Laramie, 82071
Scoping tools such as that developed by Kinder Morgan for CO2
floods provide operators with a useful intermediate-level assessment of the
potential suitability of an oil field for enhanced oil recovery—intermediate
between applying simple screening "rules of thumb" and going to the
expense of applying a full-fledged field simulation model. An important
limitation of these scoping tools, however, is that they are based on
experience with EOR at a given field. If the particular field being assessed is
not sufficiently "similar" to the field used to build the scoping
tool, then the tool's predictions will be unreliable. An analysis of CO2-flood
experience at fields in Wyoming suggest that
these fields in fact differ substantially from the fields (located in West
Texas and Oklahoma)
underlying the KM tool, which points to the need for a Wyoming-specific scoping
tool. The tool currently under development at the University of Wyoming's
Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute will address this need. Other limitations of
the KM tool are its exclusive focus on a single EOR method and its assumption
of a fixed price path when assessing the economic viability of EOR. In
contrast, the EORI tool will allow operators to assess non- CO2
methods as well, and to explicitly account for price uncertainty when
performing the economic analysis.