Oil Energy Stocks

Enhanced oil recovery is a process for ensuring optimum oil extraction from an oil well by adopting new and advanced scientific technologies. The term oil recovery indicates the process of extracting oil from oil well to the surface. The basic intention behind using enhanced oil recovery process or EOR is to obtain maximum oil from the oil reserve.
Basically the process of oil recovery consists of three stages. In the first stage or the primary stage, oil from the well will be extracted with the help of the natural pressure within the reservoir. The fluids that contain hydrocarbon formation are being commonly used to stimulate the oil wells at the first stage of oil extraction.
The process of extracting oil that remains in the well after the primary stage of oil extraction is then extracted through the secondary stage of oil recovery. Gas injection and water flooding are the commonly used techniques at this second stage of oil recovery.
It is in the tertiary recovery or the third stage of oil recovery that the enhanced oil recovery technology will be effectively utilized to get the maximum possible oil from the oil reservoir. Gas injection technology is the most commonly used enhanced oil recovery technology. It is the process by which natural gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen or other similar gases that are capable of expanding or stimulating the oil well injected to the oil well whereby additional oil is pushed to the surface. Another advantage of using this EOR technology is that these gases are capable of brining maximum oil from the oil well by lowering the viscosity of the fluid in the well.
The use of carbon dioxide injection as the EOR technique has its own merits and demerits. The main advantage of using CO2 injection technique is that it can be stored away from the atmosphere and so it can be effectively used as a tool to combat the threat of global warming. But the additional oil that is extracted from the oil will add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere while combustion and the benefits that we have achieved by offsetting CO2 will be of no use with this.
The other techniques used of EOR are the thermal recovery method and chemical injection method. Thermal recovery method makes use of steam to improve the flow of oil from the well. In chemical injection technology of EOR the polymers are injected to enhance the free flow of remaining oil from the oil reservoir. Detergent like surfactants are also being utilized by the petroleum plants to recover more oil from the oil well while adopting chemical injection method of enhanced oil recovery technique.
Only ten percent of the oil from the oil well will be able to be extracted at the preliminary stage of oil extraction. Twenty to forty percent of the total oil in the well will come out in the secondary stage whereas the new techniques involved in EOR technology ensures thirty to sixty percent of oil extraction of the total reserve. Therefore EOR technology enhances the life of an oil well.