EOR - Enhanced Oil Recovery
The Next Big Oil Discovery is in Your Field.
ESal improves reservoir wettability
Optimizing wettability in your waterflood project with ESal™ can increase oil recovery by up to 50% for less than $4 per barrel without new equipment or downtime.
Oil reservoirs have an optimum wettability that maximizes oil production, but this rarely occurs in the natural state. Reservoirs can be oil-wet to the point that oil is not mobile even under waterflood. When the rock is water wet, pore throats shrink in effective diameter, as the capillary force of water clinging to the rock resists oil movement through the throat and snaps off the oil phase stranding mobile oil. This optimum state is neutral wettability or the condition where oil and water move equally well through the porous medium.
The ESal process improves reservoir wettability and increases recovery by optimizing the injection water salinity to increase recovery without adding chemicals. This is achieved by blending the produced water with surface or other groundwater in EOR projects without adding chemicals.
Learn how the ESal solution can increase oil recovery by up to 50% for less than $4 per barrel
Increased EUR, up to double digits, in your wells
Typically costs less than $4 per incremental barrel
No new equipment or change in normal operations
Increased production in as little as 6 months after deployment
Can be employed with chemical, thermal and CO₂ flooding to further improve results
Avoid or reduce freshwater usage and eliminate waste
Tertiary Benefit Forecast
Optimize wettability in your EOR Project with RightWater®
Frequently Asked Questions
There is much debate even today about the mechanisms, but the emerging consensus is changing salinity alters the wettability of the reservoir system to increase recovery (see our reference page for more information). At ESal our question is do we have enough practical understanding to make it work in the field. The answer is yes, we do. This knowledge is incorporated into our screening tool and our design process to provide you with the best chance of success. Our step-wise process of screening, lab testing, design and field deployment allows the client to de-risk the process saving time and money.
While there is limited field experience in this area, we know you can alter wettability in shale wells through our laboratory research and is currently being done with limited success with surfactants. In fact, many companies currently use surfactants in their fracking fluid which can be expensive ($250K/well). However, the basic conditions that allow us to alter wettability with salinity are present in shale. While it is early days, there is some published work that shows that wettability alteration by salinity modification works in shale (see our reference page for more information). Finally, the prospect of re-using produced water instead of disposing it is very attractive especially in basins where produced water volumes are high.
Traditionally, the answer is several years and millions of dollars of lab work and reservoir modeling. At ESal we have developed a screening tool to use your data on the rock, water and oil composition together with basic data on your field that gives you a numerical score within a few weeks (see our reference page for more information). This procedure provides a fast and reliable answer and identifies which factors are the most sensitive for your field. We can screen one or more fields quickly and provided you with the critical information at the speed of business.
Our screening tool and lab tests provide our clients with good estimates of potential benefits. Depending on the type of reservoir (shale, carbonate, clastic) and the stage of deployment the benefit will vary. However, in general both field and lab testing has shown the benefits are from 5-15% OOIP (original oil in place) in both carbonate and sandstone reservoirs and 2-5% in shale (see our reference page for more information). Avoiding expensive projects that provide little or no return is why you want ESal in your corner.