ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY

SurgiTech's unique approach to Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) uses a mutli-faceted program to address production issues with the world's stripper wells and marginal fields.  At SurgiTech we are constantly asking "What if?".  What if we could dramatically increase the effectiveness of scale, paraffin and ashphaltene treatments?  What if we could reduce or eliminate skin damage?  What if we could take an existing vertical well and turn in into a multi-lateral without bringing a drilling rig on location?  What if we could cost effectively put energy back into the rock matrix without the expense of a full field, pressure maintenace program?

SurgiTech has assembled a host of unique technologies to address these questions by taking a completely new approach to marginal field EOR. 

• Treatment Chemical Vapor Phasing:  The vast majority of all treatment chemical applications are in a liquid form where enough liquid is poured into the wellbore to theoretically cover the upper most zone.  Where does that fluid go?  Well, the hydrostatic head of the fluid column applies the highest pressure to the deepest zone.  The distribution of the treatment fluid is not uniform and almost always, the deeper zones receive more fluid than the upper zones.  SurgiTech uses a unique vapor phasing delivery system for it's plant based line of green treatment chemicals.  The environmentally friendly chemicals are put into a vapor state and delivered to the rock matrix after a thorough cleaning by our Nitro-Dyne injection units.  Using this delivery method, chemicals are essentially, equally applied to all formation intervals simultaneously.  Gas has a much higher injectivity than a liquid, therefore we are able to deliver these treatment chemicals significantly deeper in the reservoir than liquid treatments so that they impact more of the  oil  & pore space and have an effect for a longer period of time.

• Hot Oil Replacement: Hot oiling essentially circulates an expensive fluid (oil) through a heater and down into a well to melt paraffin and asphphaltene deposits in the wellbore and hopefully in the perforations.  It does nothing to address the root cause of paraffin precipitation which is that the reservoir temperature and pressure has fallen below the oil's cloud point or falls below that point as the oil is lifted.  SurgiTech takes a completely different approach by using it's Nitro-Dyne units to create a hot, miscible gas which is first used to gas lift scale, sand and debris out of the wellbore and then used to heat and scour the tubulars with a plant based bio-solvent/surfactant that has an extremely high KB factor compared to traditional cleaning chemicals.  We then inject this hot, miscible, gas mixture into the rock matrix itself where it reduces the viscosity of the oil and re-pressurizes the near wellbore region to increase production rates and keep the oil above it's cloud point so that paraffin doesn't precipitate at the perforations.  Esters in the green chemicals leave a "slick" coating on the tubulars and in the rock matrix pore throats which inhibits paraffin sticking and promotes fluid flow.

• Oil Mobility:  As reservoir pressures drop and gas comes out of solution, the oil viscosity increases and the energy left to move the oil to the wellbore for collection, decreases.  The oil is essentially "stranded" in the rock matrix unless one or more of three things happen.   A more efficient underground drainage network can be put in place were the greater volumes of oil flow, albeit slowly to the wellbore for pumping.  The viscosity of the oil can be modified through either a thermal or chemical process to reduce it's resistance to flow.  Reservoir energy can be restored by increasing the pressure in the rock matrix to pre-depletion levels.  At SurgiTech we address all three of these key factors simultaneously! 

  • Our vertical to horizontal (V2H) well conversion process allows us to take old vertical stripper wells and cost effectively create mico-bore laterals off of the main trunk.  This process is a rigless operation and has the ability to create skin free, reservoir drainage channels which can increase long term production rates by many multiples.  You are able to create dozens of TAML Level 1 multi-laterals for a fraction of the cost of drilling a single conventional lateral.  With controlled drilling, these conductivity channels can be created with a surface area equivalent to a conventional 6" wellbore. 
  • Once the new reservoir drainage network is installed, SurgiTech's Nitro-Dyne units can connect to the wellbore and inject a hot, miscible, pressurized gas into the network where is it distributed to the rock matrix and left to "soak" for a period of time.  The Nitro-Dyne unit can also vary it's exhaust temperature from 200°F to 1100°F which allows it to add thermal energy and pressure to the reservoir while delivering it's plant based viscosity modifying chemical deep into the reservoir.   Due to the new, high conductivity micro-bore laterals, this gas can touch a high percentage of the oil which is in the proximity of the drainage network.  The increased matrix pressure combined with the chemical viscosity modification and thermal effects, can have a significant impact on the oil's ability to flow.    The Nitro-Dyne unit's viscosity modification process also works very well on standard, vertical wells in a wide range of reservoir types.  One operator was able to triple field production in just 5 months after working over just one third of the field's wells.
• Future:  At SurgiTech we are constantly on the lookout for game changing technologies that can be deployed to impact marginal field economics.  The Nitro-Dyne and the V2H process are just the beginning.