Chapter 1 - The Rising Relevance of EOR

01-00 - Introduction (4 min.) Sample Lesson
01-01 - Current Status of Oil Production (23 min.)

Chapter 2 - Polymer Flooding - Practical Overview

02-01 - Oil Recovery Mechanisms (7 min.)
02-02 - Polymer Flooding - A Practical Overview (10 min.)
02-03 - Benefits of Polymer Flooding (7 min.) Quiz: 02-03 - Benefits of Polymer Flooding

Chapter 3 - Polymer Flooding - The Mechanisms

03-01 - Mechanisms Of Polymer Flooding (10 min.)
03-02 - Video - Crossflow (4 min.)
03-03 - Video - Post-Flush (9 min.) Quiz: 03-03 - Video - Post-Flush

Chapter 4 - Polymer Flooding: Essential Know-Hows

04-01 - Chemistries & Product Forms (11 min.)
04-02 - Viscosity & Rheology (6 min.)
04-03 - Polymer Degradations (9 min.)
04-04 - Important Considerations (5 min.) Quiz: 04-04 - Important Considerations

Chapter 5 - Polymer Flooding: Applicability

05-01 - Where It Applies (14 min.)
05-02 - When It Applies (18 min.) Quiz: 05-02 - When It Applies

Chapter 6 - Field & Reservoir Screening

06-01 - Typical Workflows & Past Failures (21 min.)
06-02 - Goals And Metrics (5 min.)
06-03 - Area and Well Selection (18 min.)
06-04 - Analysis and Baseline (14 min.)
06-05 - Choosing a Viscosity (5 min.)

Chapter 7 - Basic Economics of Polymer Flooding

07-01 - Overview Of Economics (23 min.) Quiz: 07-01 - Overview Of Economics

Chapter 8 - Laboratory Testing

08-01 - Polymer Selection & Screening (19 min.)
08-02 - Polymer Evaluation - Rheology (26 min.)
08-03 - Polymer Degradation (6 min.)
08-04 - Polymer Characterization In Porous Media (15 min.)
08-05 - Propagation (24 min.)
08-06 - Retention (13 min.)
08-07 - Summary on Corefloods (9 min.)
08-08 - Conclusions On Laboratory Testing (12 min.) Quiz: 08-08 - Conclusions On Laboratory Testing

Chapter 9 - Simulation

09-01 - EOR Simulation Stages & Tools (26 min.)
09-02 - Modeling Tips (16 min.) Quiz: 09-02 - Modeling Tips

Chapter 10 - Facilities & Operations

10-01 - Equipment, Facilities & Operations (21 min.)

Chapter 11 - Monitoring

11-01 - Monitoring - Injection (24 min.)
11-02 - Monitoring - Production (4 min.)
11-03 - Field Examples (15 min.) Quiz: 11-03 - Field Examples

Chapter 12 - Reservoir Responses

12-01 - Water-Cut Variations (12 min.)
12-02 - Pressure & Oil-Cut Variations (10 min.)
12-03 - When To Stop Polymer Injection (11 min.) Quiz: 12-03 - When To Stop Polymer Injection

Chapter 13 - Injectivity

13-01 - Injectivity (26 min.) Quiz: 13-01 - Injectivity

Chapter 14 - Production Challenges

14-01 - Production Challenges (17 min.) Quiz: 14-01 - Production Challenges

Polymer Flooding Essentials / Chapter 1 - The Rising Relevance of EOR

Lesson 01-00 - Introduction

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Transcript

01. Lesson 1.00: Introduction 02. Course Objectives 03. Lay-out 04. About the Presenter 05. Publications

01. Lesson 1.00: Introduction

Welcome to Polymer Flooding, The Essentials. My name is Antoine Thomas, and I will be your teacher for this course.

02. Course Objectives

What are the objectives? It's to provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of polymer flooding from field selection to field-wide implementation. I will really focus on polymers and polymer flooding, leaving aside surfactants and alkalis from the surfactant polymer and alkali surfactant polymer techniques. And the idea is that at the end of this course you have an actionable plan ready for quick field roll-out.

03. Lay-out

Regarding the content. So I will start with an introduction about EOR and why it is still very relevant today. Chapter 2 will be polymer flooding, overview and benefits. Chapter 3, the mechanisms, how it works. Chapter 4, some essentials; product forms, chemistries, rheology, degradation. Chapter 5, applicability, where and when it applies. Chapter 6, field and reservoir screening. Chapter 7, basic economics. Chapter 8, lab testing, how to screen select evaluate polymers. Chapter 9, simulation. Chapter 10, facilities and some operational aspects. Chapter 11, monitoring, when you start injecting in the field. Chapter 12, reservoir responses. Chapter 13, an extra on injectivity. And chapter 14, water treatment and possible production challenges.

04. About the Presenter

About me, I'm a geologist by background. I graduated in 2009 from the National School of Geology in Nancy in France. My specialty is petroleum engineering and reservoir engineering. I worked a bit more than 10 years at SNF, designing and helping with the design of polymer floods around the world in pretty much all the countries. I also worked in the lab in SNF, helping build the core flood lab, running alot of core floods and managing R&D products. I was also involved a little bit in fracturing fluids and drilling fluids. And eventually I moved to Moscow as a technical advisor, also helping to develop, I would say, the technical expertise in the country and their projects, but still having, I would say, looking at all the other projects around the world. I gathered all the knowledge I have acquired over the years in a book called Essentials of Polymer Flowing Technique, published by Wiley in 2019. And I started a website, also on a podcast, to try to share this knowledge. After SNF I joined a startup just during the COVID period that was providing innovative solutions to detect 4D changes in reservoirs. And after COVID I decided to become independent, to try to integrate all the good ideas and new technologies into geoscience projects and EOR projects from geophysics, seismic interpretation to field development, EOR plan and monitoring, to try really to better understand the reservoirs and I would say improve the success rates of both watershed of conformance treatment and help people accelerate moving from the lab to the field.

05. Publications

Some publications if you're interested to understand the topics I've been working on. The first slide, so injectivity, polymer rheology, field design implementation, and more recently about seismic interpretation, to try to improve reservoir characterization before we do anything to be sure that we don't waste money into a box that we really don't know.
And that's the second slide, about also viscosity measurement, the choice of the polymers, and some more generic papers to try to share the main ideas around polymer injection.
And so without further ado, let's start with the first chapter, which is an introduction about enhanced oil recovery and its rising relevance, I would say, in 2025.