Polymer Developments in Petroleum Development Oman PDO: Learnings from Past Applications and Advances for Future

Abstract

Abstract A significant part of PDO oil resides in the fields located in the South of Oman. These oil fields have good reservoir rock properties, moderate reservoir temperatures, brine salinities, and medium to high oil viscosities with low GOR. Most fields are mature and were waterflooded for decades; however, growing production water cuts make such oil recovery increasingly expensive and GHG emission intensive. Polymer flooding is an optimal and mature technology to address these challenges. PDO has embarked on trialing the technology as early as the 1980s in the Marmul oil field, where today, several field applications (from the field trials to commercial scales) are implemented. With the start of a commercial-scale project in Marmul in 2010, polymer flooding has proven to be cost-competitive throughout the long period with varying oil prices even compared to conventional waterflood. The injection of a polymer solution intensifies the oil recovery, reducing the production water cut, thereby decreasing the intensity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There are several advances in PDO regarding polymer developments in other oil fields, where efforts are being made to implement external competitive solutions and improve the project schedules. This approach eliminates the need for field trials and uses available data to forecast the polymer flood performance in different fields and reservoirs. Additionally, the project schedules are improved by utilizing the Operational Lease contracting concept whereby the polymer facilities are leased from and operated by an experienced contractor. This approach can significantly accelerate the project's start-up since the facilities are standardized and, in some cases, are readily available for lease. This paper summarizes the learnings from previous polymer projects over the past decade and the forward outlook on the ongoing PDO efforts to expedite the polymer projects in the funnel. In addition, the efforts to improve the cost competitiveness by the recently adopted Category Management approach for polymer projects from both contracting and standardizations are discussed.