A Review of Tertiary Recovery in Illinois

Abstract

This paper was prepared for the Second Midwest Oil and Gas Industry Symposium of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Indianapolis, Ind., March 28–29, 1974. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Abstract Tertiary recovery work done in Illinois to date has included in situ combustion in two reservoirs containing oil too viscous to waterflood successfully; a few trials of steam in huff-and-puff applications; and an increasing number of small-scale pilot size to semi-field-scale size chemical floods. The in situ combustion tests have proven that in situ combustion is capable of removing almost all of the oil from a porous reservoir, although as much as one-fourth of the oil may be consumed underground as fuel for the process. Chemical floods, using sulfonated hydrocarbons either in microemulsions or in aqueous solution, have shown that additional oil can be removed from sandstone reservoirs that have already been subjected to waterflood recovery methods. Partially hydrolyzed acrylamides have proven to be a very useful adjunct to the proven to be a very useful adjunct to the application of sulfonated hydrocarbons in chemical floods as a means of improving mobility control of injected fluids. A brief review of two in situ combustion projects and eight chemical floods is given in projects and eight chemical floods is given in this paper. Data are from earlier published papers plus more recent communication with papers plus more recent communication with authorized company representatives. Introduction For the purpose of this paper, tertiary recovery is broadly spoken of as any process of oil recovery by chemical or thermal means beyond the secondary recovery methods of waterflooding, air-gas repressuring, or use of vacuum. This paper is a review of all known tertiary paper is a review of all known tertiary recovery projects that have been done in Illinois (Fig. 1).