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Alkali Surfactant Polymer (ASP) flooding is a tertiary recovery process of injecting water and a very low concentration of alkali surfactant into the ground in order to increase the amount of oil recovery from subterranean petroleum reservoirs.
Water-soluble polymers increase the viscosity of the injected water and helps to displace moderately viscous oils. The goal of adding surfactant to the polymer is to reduce oil-water interfacial tension and displace trapped residual oil.
Three phases of Oil Wells
[edit]Oil wells, over the course of their producing lives, go through three phases in which different processes and techniques are used to maintain the maximum levels of crude oil production. All of these techniques focus on forcing oil to the wellhead where it can be pumped to the surface.
Primary Recovery
[edit]In the first phase, the natural pressures of reservoir are used as the driving force to bring the oil to the surface.
Secondary Recovery
[edit]In the second phase, water is flooded, or gas is injected, to maintain a pressure that will force the oil to move.
Tertiary Recovery
[edit]Tertiary Recover, also known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), introduces fluids that reduce viscosity and improve flow. Alkali Surfuctant Polymer flooding is one process used in EOR to increase the flow of oil.
Implementation of ASP
[edit]Although no large-scale surfactant-polymer floods have been implemented, and the process is currently being piloted by a number of companies (Rex Energy [1] , LeNorman, Cano Petroleum, Sinopec).