Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has successfully commissioned its first full-scale enhanced oil recovery project at Marmul, according to the Oman Daily Observer.
The Marmul Polymer Project, in the south of PDO’s concession area, will add a further 8,000 barrels per day of oil production over the coming years, the newspaper said.
“This is an ambitious and novel project that involved building a water treatment plant with a capacity of 80,000 cubic metres per day and a polymer preparation and injection facilities station which will have a capacity of 17,500 cubic metres per day,” said managing director John Malcolm, according to the newspaper.
“It is an excellent example of the increasing application of new technology to increase production at PDO’s mature oilfields,” he added.
The Marmul field was first discovered in 1956, the newspaper said. The main Al Khlata reservoir has very heavy, viscous crude and production will be substantially increased using polymer flooding as an enhanced oil recovery technique.
According to the newspaper, polymer flooding works by adding polymer to water in order to make it more viscous before it is injected into the reservoir. Increasing the viscosity of water leads to a more effective oil sweep, which increases both production and the ultimate recovery factor.
