Economic Comparison of Hydrocarbon Recovery under Surfactant Injection of Different Schemes

Abstrak

Chemical EOR research has been focused on using surfactants to change oil-wet to water-wet to enhance water imbibition into matrix blocks. Wettability alteration results in spontaneous imbibition of water into oil containing matrix, thus driving oil out of matrix. These surfactants include cationic, nonionic, and anionic. It has been found that anionic function to reduce interfacial tension (IFT) and associated buoyancy are very important mechanisms. Surfactants find application in almost every chemical industry, Moreover, surfactants play a major role in the oil industry, for example, in enhanced and tertiary oil recovery.
The objective of this work is to further develop these novel and environmental friendly surfactant systems by studying its cost-effectiveness and feasibility through a reservoir simulation model (stratified reservoir). In this study, we will be focusing on the economics evaluation of two different surfactant injection schemes, which are continuous injection and huff & puff technique.
The capital investment such as injection pump, blending tank, agitator, injection pipeline, workover rig are counted as initial investment value (sunk cost) or CAPEX, meanwhile the operational expenses including volume surfactant injection as well as Kalium Chloride (KCl) as salinity agent are considered OPEX for computing NPV and IRR.
In order to get a clear picture of economic comparison for all cases, a simple economic evaluation is computed to estimate the NPV (Net Present Value) as well as IRR (Internal Rate of Return).
This economic evaluation is very essential to have a good decision either short or long-term project in term of capital budgeting and operating expenses, as well as the optimum hydrocarbon recovery for the current field.