DOE NEXT GEN

DOE Next Generation EOR Project (On-going work):  The significance of understanding the origins and distribution of Permian Basin residual oil zone (ROZ) resources is of high interest but is of pure academic importance unless the resource is commercially viable.  The problem is that the commerciality is guarded as most of the on-going work on CO₂ flooding the ROZs is locally specific work, private, and not available to the public.

For those reasons, an operator was needed that had interests in making their ROZ project available to a broad audience.  Legado Resources of The Woodlands, Tx and their Goldsmith Landreth San Andres project was such a company.  The DOE solicitation for Next Generation EOR came at a perfect time so the UTPB and APTA ROZ Study Team put together the Next Gen proposal to DOE.

The project team is able to get involved in the on-going CO₂ EOR project work that Legado is conducting.  They started with a ROZ only dedicated 4-pattern pilot and are now advancing the flooding to a commingle ROZ + MPZ, larger project.  The exciting feature of this project and the work that will become part of it through the DOE cost sharing will be the comparisons that can be made about the ROZs and main pay zones (MPZs), their oil response to CO₂ injection, and additional research such as conformance control and mitigation that is able to be supported through the DOE funding.

In summary, the DOE project is all about a case history of reservoir response to CO₂ in both the MPZ and ROZ intervals at the Goldsmith Landreth Unit and will allow comparisons and extrapolations to the wealth of data on MPZ in multiple fields to the ROZ resources.

Sponsors and contributing members of the research task are the following Companies/organizations.

Legado Resources, The Woodlands, Tx (Host Company)

Chevron, Houston, Tx Office