Abstract
Recent production summaries provided by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board have indicated that in Alberta, between seven and eight volumes of cubic meters of water are produced for every cubic meter of conventional and in situ heavy oil. Assuming annual world production of oil is approximately four billion cubic meters, produced water to oil ratios worldwide are similar to those in Alberta and average water treatment costs are approximately one dollar per cubic meter, the oil industry world wide spends about $28 billion per year on water treatment and disposal. It is possible that such costs could be in the range of $40 to $50 billion per year (as estimated on some service company web sites), if one considers that many of the world’s producing reservoirs have a longer production history than the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin.
In the paper, we will describe some recent advances in the control of water production and treatment of produced water for recycle or disposal.
Author:
Wallace, E. D., Zhou, J., Matthews, C., and Hoffman, E.
Publisher:
World Petroleum Congress
Year Published:
2000
Purchase Link:
