Oil and natural gas are trapped within porous rocks deep under the earth's crust and extracted by drilling a well with an oil rig. Once the well is drilled and completed the rig is removed, put Well on production and extraction of the reserves begins.

Today, extraction is all about what comes next. It’s not enough to just find a new resource and drill, drill, drill. It’s what an Operator company does after this to continue recovery and potentially DOUBLE production (and profits).

The 3 Recovery Phases

Wells when put on production they naturally decline after some time and to maintain production it is particularly important to introduce ‘artificial energy’ into a reservoir to boost production. Hence, the industry developed these 3 phases to recover as much as possible of the oil and gas.

1. Primary Oil Recovery: This phase uses natural pressure of the reservoir to push crude oil to the surface, typically extracting only 10% to 20% of the oil in the reservoir. Primary oil recovery is the extraction of only that oil that rises to the surface naturally or using lift devices like beam pumps. This phase only skims the surface of a reservoir’s potential.

2. Secondary Oil Recovery: Secondary oil recovery injects pressurized gas and water into the network of wells to drive residual crude oil and gas that has remained after the primary recovery phase to the surface. In this phase we’re looking at the extraction of an additional 25% to 30% of the oil in the reservoir.

3. Tertiary Oil Recovery: This phase is called EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery). It is, the ever-evolving third stage of recovery, involves the injection of various materials beyond water and gas into a network of wells to improve the flow of oil and gas to extract additional volumes of up to 30% more. This process differs from secondary recovery not only through the materials it injects, it’s not only maintaining reservoir pressure, but it alters the properties of the oil to facilitate additional production.