Status and progress of worldwide EOR field applications

Nowadays, EOR has been an important research topic in oilfield development and has made greater contribution to worldwide oil production. Whereas, a few of available statistical resources and the lack of systematical analysis hinder the understanding of the latest status and progress of different EOR technologies. This work, on the basis of systematic survey and data collection, makes a latest overview and analysis of worldwide EOR field application cases and gives a systematical discussion and summary from various aspects of different EOR methods (chemical flooding, gas injection, thermal recovery and smart water flooding, etc.), involving development status, maturity, advantages and limitations and so forth. Moreover, some reservoir statistics of some EOR field application cases in China (from 2008) and other countries (from 2014) are systematically presented and discussed. The work not only is beneficial for the reservoir workers to share the successful experience and learn the lessons of failure in oilfield development plan design and operation, but also is helpful to grasp the latest development status and maturity of EOR field applications and to provide important guarantee for the future development of different EOR techniques.