Abstract
Nowadays, the problem of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and improved oil recovery (IOR) is a key problem in petroleum theory and practice. In world oil-and-gas practice, two different terms are in use: EOR (enhanced oil recovery) meaning intensive, forcible methods; and IOR (improved oil recovery) ?? advanced and moderate methods.
The enhanced oil recovery methods do not provide a scale effect. There are about 1500 active projects in the world using various EOR technologies, and their annual production build-up is estimated as 100-120 million tons. It is only about 2% of all produced oil in the world, which is equivalent to the total transporting and other losses.
In the USA, the ??additional? oil recovery is kept at the level of 30-35 MT/Y and has not exceeded this threshold value since 1986. In 1986, there were 512 active projects and in 2008 there were 184, so there is an obvious tendency of a decrease. The situation in other regions of the world is much the same. In terms of the final oil recovery, at many oilfields the efficiency of EOR is very low or zero.
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