Oilfield Chemistry A Challenge for the Industry
Authors: Vetter O.J. 
Published: December 2007

Some branches of chemistry are now far advanced. Highly sophisticated chemical methods and processes are being applied, for example, in spacecraft technology, medicine, inorganic and organic catalysis, etc. Unfortunately, very little of this chemical sophistication is found in oilfield practice. We still do not know why a scale inhibitor works or even, in most cases, why the scale is formed. We still have to find out how different chemicals act when they are contacted by formation materials. Our knowledge of adsorption and desorption phenomena and of reactions at the liquid-solid interface under wellbore conditions is extremely limited. How can we determine the stability of chemicals under oilfield conditions? What makes a dispersion of solids in water or oil break? How do different chemicals react with each other or with the formation when they are injected simultaneously?This lack of sophistication and knowledge in oilfield chemistry is even more amazing when we consider the amounts of money spent for futile chemical treatments in the field. Multimillions of dollars are spent yearly to inject chemicals into wells and reservoirs, and to treat reservoirs, wells, and well effluents with techniques and chemicals that are sometimes obscure and uncertain. The results are often unpredictable and undesirable. For example, under some conditions, certain scale inhibitors create scale instead of preventing it. And quite a number of formations have been plugged completely by chemical treatments instead of being made more permeable. Millions of dollars have been wasted on the wrong chemicals because the reactions observed in a simple beaker or bottle test did not occur in the reservoir. Treatment of emulsions, for example, is still carried out by trial-and-error chemistry. Most of these failures are due to lack of knowledge about the specific chemistry involved. Admittedly, some such failures could have been avoided by using chemical methods that are known; human ignorance has played an important role. This is partly the fault of our system. An oil field is commonly - and for good reasons - run by a petroleum engineer; but some of the chemistry applied in the field actually would require the additional employment of a chemist. Our industry and educational institutions have much to learn in this respect. After all our present knowledge has been evaluated, we find that many "nonsense" jobs are still carried through with the idea that we do not have anything better. The situation is shrugged off and rationalized with such comments as "you can't win them all" or "win a few - lose a few". This state of affairs presents a major problem to the entire oil industry. There seems to be only one way to reach acceptable levels of technical and scientific performance: We must pay more attention to serious research on the basic chemical principles and facts involved in our daily operations. The combined research efforts of oilfield operators, service companies, the chemical industry, and various research organizations could bring our knowledge of oilfield chemistry up to a respectable level. Unfortunately, in the past no professional society has seen the need of a forum for specifically relating fundamental chemical studies to oilfield problems. Oilfield chemistry lies in a "grey" area between the different sciences and technologies: the subject seemed too "oilfield-related" for the American Chemical Society (ACS) and too "chemistry-related" for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The few tentative efforts to consider oilfield chemistry have been concerned with operational side issues and have done little to improve our understanding of the chemistry involved. Recently, however, the SPE agreed to sponsor a symposium specifically aimed at fundamental oilfield chemistry, and now offers its full support to shedding light on the special chemical problems found in the oil field. This symposium could well be the start of a fruitful cooperation between the different research organizations. The least it will accomplish is to attract outside research people to our problems, and we hope it will generate interest in this field. This would be a step forward. The main goal of this symposium will be to clarify the present status of our knowledge on the basic chemical principles employed in the oil field. Thus, it will be aimed specifically at chemists, chemical engineers, physicists with some knowledge of petroleum engineering, and petroleum engineers with a strong background in chemistry. This forum will not be concerned with immediate application of our knowledge in the field, but rather with the basics that can be used for the applications of tomorrow. We may be in desperate need of such knowledge in the future. We now drill holes almost 30,000 ft deep. The temperature and pressure conditions encountered in these wells and reservoirs will inevitably present new questions to chemists and engineers. How can we help to answer those new questions when we have not yet answered yesterday's old ones?