Investigation of Water Injection Method in Oil Fields for Enhanced Oil Recovery

In general, about 30 percent of crude oil can be recovered naturally. To recover the rest of crude oil, it is necessary to use enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. Based on the scientific investigations, there are about ten billion barrels of unrecovered crude oil in Iranian reservoirs. This point indicates the importance of enhanced oil recovery methods. In this paper, the improvements of water injection methods are reviewed. In water injection method, scale formation is one of the main problems. This problem decreases the permeability of core. To prevent this problem, the formation water and injection water should be compatible. In this regard, selection of proper source of water is also important. It can be concluded that the thermodynamic models can be used to predict scale formation. These methods are used to increase the oil recovery efficiency.