ABSTRACT
Chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) is a method of displacing the remaining capillary-trapped oil from an oil reservoir to the production well after regular methods, such as water flooding, are depleted. The surfactant mixture is usually injected in the field as a dilute solution in brine, often in combination with other chemicals such as alkali, polymers, and co-solvents to further improve the oil displacement to the production well. In the past, EOR methods and related experimental and simulation studies of microemulsions have seen several revivals (see, e.g., References 1-3). In all cases, these revivals are related to peaks in the crude oil price. For a recent overview of the application of EOR in the oil industry, we refer to the work of Hirasaki et al. [4].
