America (and all oil producing countries) need to produce more oil from their current oil wells, because new discoveries of oil reserves are declining, while demand for oil will continue to grow.

After employing all available primary and secondary oil recovery processes, fifty percent of the oil in any given oil reservoir are still left stranded, stuck and immobilized in the formations that primary oil recovery pressures and secondary water-flooding displacement cannot recover.

The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that of the known 582 billion barrels of oil in-place in previously discovered oil fields in America, 208 billion barrels of that oil has already been extracted or proven, which leaves 374 billion barrels of stranded, immobile oil still available for extraction in existing operating oil fields using enhanced oil recovery technologies.

With tertiary enhanced oil recovery  technologies, such as steam-injection, chemical flooding and CO2 gas injection methodologies to change oil viscosities, interfacial tensions, and oil-to-water saturations, the DOE estimates that 100 billion barrels of this “stranded” oil resource may become technically recoverable.

Unfortunately, tertiary recovery methods being used today have been constrained by economics and environmental concerns.  In the case of CO2,  the price of carbon dioxide, the cost of pipeline infrastructure to deliver CO2 to candidate reservoirs far away from the source of CO2, and leakage of CO2 are issues of concern.  In the case of steam-injection, the cost and use of water in times of drought and the burning of fossil-fuels to make heat to boil the water cause environmental issues to arise.

Initial lab tests indicate that EncapSol will work downhole in gaseous form for the purpose of stranded oil extraction.  Freestone intends to conduct multiple field tests with EncapSol as a downhole injectant (in both liquid form and gaseous form) to determine the extent to which it may be capable of increasing recovery yields in different geologic formations, including oil-wet and mixed-wet reservoirs.  Freestone intends to form partnerships with local operators and company’s currently providing steam-injection and CO2-injection services to the industry.