The topic is filled by methods that few petroleum engineers feel comfortable with, so we will present the topic for a normal petroleum engineer who knows Darcy’s law, but not necessarily the underlying mathematical homogenization of Navier-Stokes and Boltzmann equations.  The recent development of high resolution x-ray tomography and increased computational speed and memory, have opened up for new ways to directly assess the efficiency of enhanced oil recovery methods for immobile oil at the pore scale, including pore scale simulation of surfactant flooding.  I will present an overview of the theoretical framework for fluid flow at pore-to-core scale, and present a few recent results on pore scale flow modeling relevant to heavy oil.

About the Author

Erik Skjetne

Skjetne received MSc in Physics 1990 and PhD in Petroleum Technology 1995 from NTH (now NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. In 1991 Skjetne worked for a high tech startup company (Autodisplay AS). In 1994 Skjetne worked as Total Norge AS Fellow at the national research center (CNRS) in Poitiers, France. In the period 1996 - 97 Skjetne was post doc in Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University, California, USA. The research focused on pore scale fluid mechanics. Since 1998 Skjetne has worked with Statoil, first as production engineer onshore and offshore at the world largest subsea field Åsgard in the Norwegian Sea and later on various leadership roles across the value chain; including subsurface R&D and technology, opening of new exploration acreage, 19th exploration round and early phase field development in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. Skjetne was awarded Statoil’s Global Strategy and Business Development’s “Innovation in Business Development Award 2013”. In 2012 - 2013 Skjetne served as technology company mentor arranged by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and Norwegian INTSOK. In the period 2008 - 2013 Skjetne led the Norwegian technology strategy work group on “Exploration and Increased Recovery” by OG21 on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, and in 2013 participated in a similar work group for the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation. Skjetne works in Moscow as Statoil’s Asset Manager for a heavy oil field in Western Siberia, Russia.  

Thomas Ramstad

Ramstad received MSc in Physics 2003 and PhD in Physics 2007 from NTNU in Norway. In the period 2007 - 2013 Ramstad  worked on research on pore scale flow in Numerical Rocks / Lithicon.  From 2013 Ramstad has been working on multiscale EOR modeling at Statoil’s R&D center in Trondheim, Norway.

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