Economic Analysis of Low Salinity Polymer Flooding Potential in the Niger Delta Oil Fields

Abstract

With the current growing demand for oil, oil price and the concerns about future oil supplies increases the pressure in securing oil resources. Enhanced oil recovery processes are applied to recover oil not produced by natural and secondary energy drive of the reservoir. In this study, Simulation has been carried out on a hypothetical model using (ECLIPSE 100) as the simulator. Three cases natural depletion, waterflooding, and injection of low saline polymer were considered.5-spot pattern of four vertical producers wells and one vertical injector well was used as a hypothetical well model. Economics analysis were carried out in this three scenario to determine their net present value, profit per dollar invested, payout and Discounted flow-rate of return. The results shows that low salinity polymer flooding has the highest recovery of 62% and profit with NPV @ 10 ($412.9MM), payout 0.9 years, profit per dollar invested $25.9 and dcf-ror 82%. However, waterflooding gave recovery of 42%. NPV @10 ($ 317.3MM), payout 1.2 years, profit per dollar invested $20.8, dcf-ror 78%. Natural depletion gave recovery of 16.5 %, profit with NPV @10 (230.0MM), payout 1.0 years, profit per dollar invested $9.3, dcf-ror 78%. Decision rule was applied using NPV, DCF-ROR, NCR and payout which states that project with higher NPV, DCF-ROR, NCR and less Payout are more economically viable. The result of the three cases considered shows that low salinity polymer injection is more profitable followed by waterflooding and natural depletion.