Enhanced Oil Recovery
Ryder Scott prepares enhanced recovery studies and feasibility reports that include design of fluid injection projects, horizontal drilling studies and thermal recovery evaluation. The firm was the first engineering firm and research laboratory in the world devoted to solving waterflood problems in oil fields in the mid-1930s. By the turn of the century, Ryder Scott had evaluated or designed water floods in all major oil and gas provinces worldwide. Today, the firm is still a leader in waterflood engineering 80 years since it first pioneered this enhanced recovery technique.
Ryder Scott has evaluated and designed various miscible CO2 flood projects and evaluated CO2 source fields. This includes estimating reserves, evaluating reservoir performance and infill drilling results, reviewing surface facility design for CO2 re-injection compression projects, optimizing CO2 flood management and calculating cashflow economics. Our petroleum engineers have studied the performance of nearly every major CO2 flood in the world.
Ryder Scott also designs thermally enhanced recovery methods. We recommend grid size, well spacing, patterns and sensitivity studies of pertinent parameters, such as injection rates and temperature profiles. We review both vertical and horizontal wellbores in reservoirs with API gravities varying between 5 and 20 degrees to devise cyclic or continuous steamflooding development plans. We also design steam-assisted gravity drainage programs for heavy oil production, and evaluate sensitivity to steam injection rates, soaks and quality.
Ryder Scott also performs in-situ combustion EOR studies. In this process, heavy oil components are coked and burned, creating a high temperature combustion front surrounding the injection well that migrates toward a production well.