Properly implemented and monitored, secondary recovery processes greatly improve oil recovery efficiencies, thus reducing the overall cost of produced reserves. However, in some oil bearing rock, even the best engineered oil recovery method will not mobilize all recoverable oil that is contacted by the drive fluid.

Many crude oils are reactive to alkaline and surfactant agents; that is, drive fluids augmented with either an alkaline or surfactant chemical, or both, will scour residual oil from the rock. If crude oil screenings indicate that the interfacial tension between the crude and reservoir rock can be reduced at least 100 times with an economical alkaline and/or surfactant drive fluid, then one may expect to increase ultimate recoveries 3 to 15%.

The laboratory crude oil screening represents the first engineering step in determining ASP flood performance. If the crude is reactive, then the operator may continue the study with laboratory core flooding to help quantify the amount of residual oil liberated.

The TIOR-CO3® chemical augmented waterflood process mobilizes residual oil trapped within the reservoir rock and allows it to be produced. The PROJECT DATA worksheet information and results from the laboratory IFT study provide TIORCO engineers with the preliminary data needed to project performance of an ASP flood.