The El Dorado Micellar - Polymer Project
Authors: Coffman C.L. , Rosenwald Gary W. 
Published: December 2007

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

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Cities Service Oil Company, in cooperation with the Energy Research and Development Administration, is conducting a field demonstration test of micellar-polymer flooding in the El Dorado Field of Butler County, Kansas. This paper defines the objectives and the background history related to the test.

The purpose of this project is to run comparative field and laboratory tests on two combinations of micellar and polymer fluids that are presently available. The effectiveness of each system in recovering additional oil from mature or depleted waterflood properties will be determined. Data and properties will be determined. Data and results from these tests will be published and become part of public knowledge to the extent possible under any secrecy agreements that may be required. The primary objectives of this work are to determine if commercial tertiary oil can be obtained using these methods and to determine the associated benefit and problems of each system tested.

Introduction

Current shortages of domestic crude oil supply and increasing oil prices have provided incentives to test the feasibility of tertiary oil recovery utilizing micellar and polymer solutions which have heretofore been uneconomical. If commercial production can be realized from micellar-polymer flooding, a vast amount of the resources of the country can be turned into recoverable reserves. The El Dorado demonstration project is to test these methods in a field that has undergone complete primary and waterflooding depletion operations. Since the field has been abandoned, any oil that is recovered will truly be tertiary oil.

The proposed project is designed to allow a side-by-side comparison of two micellar-polymer floods in the same field so that reservoir conditions for the two demonstration floods are as nearly identical as possible. Four contiguous nine-spot patterns are to be tested for each micellar-polymer combination (see Figure 1). Four patterns provide the repetition needed for scientific evaluation. The repetition serves to minimize the possibility of erroneous results due to a lack possibility of erroneous results due to a lack of homogeneity in the reservoir.

This test will be conducted in the El Dorado Field in Butler County, Kansas, in the 650' Shallow Sand of the Admire group. The area meets the site criteria discussed later and listed in Table 1.