Enhanced oil recovery decisions still get made against screening tables published before half the producing wells in the world were drilled. A modern framework treats screening as three coupled filters: technical fit, operational risk, and commercial return — fed by analogues from comparable fields.
The three filters
- Technical: rock and fluid properties, drive mechanism, residual oil saturation, mobility and connectivity.
- Operational: water source, gas source, surface facilities, well integrity envelope, HSE constraints.
- Commercial: incremental recovery, capex/opex profile, oil price exposure, partner alignment.
Analogues beat literature cutoffs
A handful of comparable fields, properly catalogued, will tell you more about what is likely to work than 100 lines of generic cutoff criteria. See using an analogue field database for faster reservoir decisions.
Method-specific deep dives
The EOR screening software implements all three filters with an integrated global analogue database and pattern-level uplift estimation — defensible to partners and management.