Kring Noord-presentation ‘Does Heavy Oil Recovery Need Steam?’ by Johan van Dorp

On October the 3rd, Johan Van Dorp will give an Kring Noord-presentation about the need of steam for heavy oil recovery. Time and place to be anounced.

Heavy oil recovery traditionally starts with depletion drive and (natural) waterdrive, with the result of very low recoveries. As an EOR technique, steam injection has become mature since the 1950s with the use of cyclic steam stimulation, steam drive or steamflooding, and steam-assisted gravity drainage. The high energy cost of heating the oil-bearing formation to steam temperature and the associated high CO2 footprint make steam-based technology less attractive, and many companies have actively sought alternatives or improvements. As a result, there are now many more energy efficient recovery technologies that can unlock heavy oil resources, compared with a decade ago. This presentation will discuss breakthrough alternatives to steam-based recovery as well as incremental improvement options to steam injection techniques. The key message is the importance to consider these techniques because of the cost and high CO2 footprint of steam injection.

Johan van Dorp holds an MSc in experimental physics from Utrecht University and joined Shell in 1981. He has served on several international assignments, mainly in petroleum and reservoir engineering roles. Recently, van Dorp led the extraheavy-oil research team at the Shell Technology Center in Calgary, focusing on improved in-situ heavy-oil recovery technologies. Currently, he is senior consultant in the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, a Shell-operated joint venture, and serves as Shell Group principal technical expert in thermal EOR.