Today, in the major oil basins of the US including the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, DJ, and Powder River there are still more than 1,300 Billion Barrels in Place in shale oil formations. This translates to original volumes in place ranging from 40-100 MMBOE/acre section. It is calculated that between 8% to 12% of the Original Oil In Place can be recovered with new fields development, infill drilling, and restimulation, as represented in the following figure.

But technical limits due to the drive mechanisms involved such as pressure depletion, compaction, and desorption as well as other development issues such as parent-child interactions or even diminishing returns on maturing fields bring a challenging environment to E&Ps who are invested in shale, leaving in the majority of cases 95% of the oil in the ground. Extending this to global resources, isn't it all a waste?

World Map of Unconventional Oil and Gas Deposits (Author Ökologix, Wikimedia)

As physical modeling suggests, proven applications like miscible gas floods will yield a significant improvement on the recovery factor, more so when reservoir fluid behaviors yield favorable conditions for gas cycling re-vaporization or even when trying unconventional aqueous phase modifiers. On the other hand, limitations from the oil window, vertical containment, contiguous acreage, and other factors may limit the overall applicability. To help in this in Darcy we prepared the following Gas EOR Technology Development Landscape, where each of the three edges of the triangle represents a cornerstone to upscale certain Recovery Technology and shows the core spaces we've included in each one:

• In the Digital space where conceptualization, and ideation is made, we have physical and numerical models Simulation and Digital Rock tech
• In the Lab space, EOR potential is examined via hydrocarbon displacement from rock matrix, gases and fluids evaluation for contacting and extracting hydrocarbons, and PVT behavior is understood
• In the Field space are solutions involved in executing an EOR implementation such as compression hardware and diagnostic technologies to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness
• But the Core EOR Technologies in the case of GEOR are High Rate and Pressure Technologies which have started to populate in the past years as you can see in the following Framework

Log in to access the framework: Here, or access by starting your 30-day free trial!

This week's focus was on the Know-How, so we brought Shale IOR to present their experiences and comment on what needs to be done for Unconventional EOR to succeed and as stated by the event's survey results, EOR is a priority for most of us! as indicated by the 94% of respondents, who said their company was interested in EOR in unconventional reservoirs. This was comprised of the 14% of fast-movers that are already implementing pilots and another 25% of the early adopters that are planning on doing a pilot or have been actively sharing information and studying the topic.

And when asked what aspects are most concerning in regard to implementing an EOR project, Quantification of Impact and Value came at the top indicating that there is still space for emerging technologies in monitoring and surveillance for pilot design and execution.

Other key concerns to think of are:

• Long project lifecycles that could lead to a range of risks to investment
• Technical risks from first of kind pilots
• Regulatory risks from permitting
• Commercial risks from gas allocation and offset issues
• Safety risks due to high-pressure operations
• Financial risks from scale of acreage and time to exit

The fact is that EOR technology could at least double Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) and has the potential for better returns than alternatives, as EOG reported more than 30% returns and Net Present Value (NPV) over Investment above 2 at $40/bbl. However, EOR still poses significant uncertainties, with estimates based on public data of pilots indicating 15-30% returns and an NPV/investment of 0.1-0.7 are a more likely scenario.

In a context where a Net Zero Emissions (NZE) for 2050 scenario, that does not demand new fields development, is not only a possibility but also is being advocated by major actors from society (eg IEA 2021), E&Ps should start looking at Enhanced Oil Recovery from Unconventionals as one of their next biggest opportunity in their portfolio. Early adopters such as EOG, Marathon, ConocoPhillips, Petroedge, MD America, EP Energy, XTO, Oxy, Pioneer, Liberty Resources, Hess, Continental Resources, and Anadarko are already on board! Where on the Innovation curve are you?

EOR Operators Roundtable: As seen in the above figure, thanks to the interest shown in this topic, we are thinking of ways to get an Operators discussion. The format we are aiming for is for operators to share past experiences/perspectives within unconventional EOR. In the past, these sessions have been open to all members and the presentations are fairly straightforward. The goal is to reach a wide audience, give the broad strokes on what has been done and what info you are looking to get more insight into, and identify other operators that could engage in deeper follow-up conversations (bi-lateral sharing or small group), which Darcy can help facilitate.

If you would like to participate in the Roundtable, either presenting or helping define the topic in the Event, first make sure you get up-to-date with Darcy content like this week O&G forum Unconventional EOR: Getting the 2X EUR Prize OUT! with Shale IOR or last months blog post on Unconventional EOR: Q&A Regarding Gas Injection in Shale Reservoirs to get some context and then write me a direct message and I will get in touch, or you can also Like the article or comment below so I can reach out by mail afterward. Thanks for reading until the end! Andres