Increasing the efficiency pf heavy-oil / bitumen recovery

随着“易油”储量的枯竭，重质/超稠油的开采对世界未来的能源需求变得更加重要。从稠油储层中利用其天然能量采油是一个非常缓慢的过程，如果不是像油砂/沥青那样不可能的话，而且留下的剩余油通常超出了经济限度。因此，在许多情况下，必须额外支持提高采收率（EOR）技术，如蒸汽、气体（通常是混相）或化学注入。尽管不断上涨的油价使我们能够向油藏注入如此昂贵的材料，但注入过程的效率一直是一个关键问题。本项目对稠油油藏提高提高采收率技术效率的途径进行了探讨。

As "easy oil" reserves are depleted, recovery of heavy/ultra-heavy oil becomes more crucial for world's future energy demand. Oil recovery from heavy oil reservoirs by its natural energy is a very slow process, if not impossible like in the cases of oil sands/bitumen, and the residual oil left behind is generally beyond the economic limits. Therefore, additional support of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques such as steam, gas (typically miscible), or chemical injections are must in many circumstances. Although increasing oil prices enable us to inject such expensive materials into oil reservoirs, the efficiency of the injection processes has always been a critical issue. This project proposes investigations on the ways to increase the efficiency of EOR techniques applied to heavy-oil reservoirs.