The State of the Art in Monitoring and Surveillance Technologies for IOR, EOR and CCUS Projects

Abstract

Abstract Monitoring and surveillance (M&S) is one of the key requisites for assessing the effectiveness and success of any Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) or Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) project. These projects can include waterflooding, gas flooding, chemical injection, or any other types. It will help understand, track, monitor and predict the injectant plume migration, flow paths, and breakthrough times. The M&S helps in quantifying the performance of the IOR/EOR project objectives. It provides a good understanding of the remaining oil saturation (ROS) and its distribution in the reservoir during and after the flood. A comprehensive and advanced monitoring and surveillance (M&S) program has to be developed for any given IOR/EOR project. The best practices of any such M&S program should include conventional, advanced and emerging novel technologies for wellbore and inter-well measurements. These include advanced time-lapse pulsed neutron, resistivity, diffusion logs, and bore-hole gravity measurements, cross-well geophysical measurements, water and gas tracers, geochemical, compositional and soil gas analyses, and 4D seismic and surface gravity measurements. The data obtained from the M&S program provide a better understanding of the reservoir dynamics and can be used to refine the reservoir simulation model and fine tune its parameters. This presentation reviews some proven best practices and draw examples from on-going projects and related novel technologies being deployed. We will then look at the new horizon for advanced M&S technologies.