Field-scale Polymer Flooding: Lessons Learnt and Experiences Gained During Past 40 Years

Abstract Early in 1964, Pye and Sandiford established the fact that polymer flooding can result in greater oil recovery than the conventional water flooding. Many additional papers sustaining and extending this information have since appeared in the literature. In the past forty years, many field-scale polymer flooding projects have been put into production and lots of information has been available from which to draw conclusions regarding of lessons learnt and experiences gained on field-scale polymer-flooding. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ranges of some important parameters within which successful polymer flooding has been achieved and to present lessons learnt and best practices on polymer flooding, thus direct to design and further achieve a high-performance polymer-flooding project.