Crude oil, which is a primary source of energy for human civilization, predicted to
rule the world even in the coming decades. Due to the fast-growing economy and expanding
population, India is the third-largest consumer of crude oil after the United States and China,
and it imports 82% of its oil needs from other countries such as Iraq,Saudi Arabia. In the near
future by 2022, India has plans to bring down the net crude oil import to 67% by
implementing local exploration and renewable energy. However, due to the high capital cost,
resource location and quality issues, the renewable energy is not ready to replace the market
of crude oil at the instant, and also the exploration of local reserves for crude oil production
seems to be scare. Thus the increase in energy demand has stressed the oil and gas companies
to exploit each reservoir till reaching its maximum productivity and high recovery factor.
Crude oil production generally involves three stages such as primary, secondary and
tertiary (or) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. In the primary recovery technique
reservoirs natural pressure displaces the hydrocarbon to the wellbore. Whereas, in the
secondary recovery technique, the gas or water is injected into the reservoir to increase the
pressure and to improve the hydrocarbon production.
With the evolution of science and technology different types of EOR operation has been
proposed such as thermal, chemical and microbial etc., but the implementation of EOR
techniques in matured reservoirs or brownfield reservoirs still pose challenges in production
due to the low efficiency of the existing EOR methods. Moreover, the implementation of
these EOR methods widely depends on the nature and type of the formation, depth, oil
viscosity and amount of oil in the reservoir. Thus, methods that suit to produce crude oils
from the matured reservoirs need to be developed.