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Solar enhanced oil recovery, or solar EOR, is a form of thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a technique applied by oil producers to extract more oil from maturing oil fields. Solar EOR uses CSP to use the sun's energy to heat water and generate steam. The steam is injected into an oil reservoir to reduce the viscosity, or thin, heavy crude thus facilitating its flow to the surface. Thermal recovery processes, also known as steam injection, have traditionally burned natural gas to produce steam. Solar EOR is proving to be a viable alternative to gas-fired steam production for the oil industry.

Demulsification is the breaking of a crude oil emulsion into oil and water phases. A fast rate of separation, a low value of residual water in the crude oil, and a low value of oil in the disposal water are obviously desirable. Produced oil generally has to meet company and pipeline specifications. For example, the oil shipped from wet-crude handling facilities must not contain more than 0.2% basic sediment and water (BS&W) and 10 pounds of salt per thousand barrels of crude oil. This standard depends on company and pipeline specifications. The salt is insoluble in oil and associated with residual water in the treated crude. Low BS&W and salt content is required to reduce corrosion and deposition of salts. The primary concern in refineries is to remove inorganic salts from the crude oil before they cause corrosion or other detrimental effects in refinery equipment. The salts are removed by washing or desalting the crude oil with relatively fresh water. This stability arises from the formation of interfacial films that encapsulate the water droplets. To separate this emulsion into oil and water, the interfacial film must be destroyed and the droplets made to coalesce.

Geological effects can impact the design and successful completion of oil, gas, and geothermal wells. Understanding the stresses and pore pressures within the subsurface are important to development of a geomechanical model that can guide well design as part of an integrated process to minimize cost and maximize safety. The normals to the three orthogonal planes define a Cartesian coordinate system (x1, x2, and x3). The stress tensor has nine components, each of which has an orientation and a magnitude (see Figure 1.a). Three of these components are normal stresses, in which the force is applied perpendicular to the plane (e.g., S11 is the stress component acting normal to a plane perpendicular to the x1-axis); the other six are shear stresses, in which the force is applied along the plane in a particular direction (e.g., S12 is the force acting in the x2-direction along a plane perpendicular to the x1-axis).

Understanding rock properties and how they react under various types of stress is important to development of a geomechanical model before drilling. Some major geomechanical rock properties are described below. To first order, most rocks obey the laws of linear elasticity. In other words, the stress required to cause a given strain, or normalized length change (Δlk /ll), is linearly related to the magnitude of the deformation and proportional to the stiffnesses (or moduli), Mijkl. Furthermore, the strain response occurs instantaneously as soon as the stress is applied, and it is reversible--that is, after removal of a load, the material will be in the same state as it was before the load was applied.

The electromagnetic heating of oil wells and reservoirs refers to thermal processes for the improved production of oil from underground reservoirs. The source of the heat, generated either in the wells or in the volume of the reservoir, is the electrical energy supplied from the surface. This energy is then transmitted to the reservoir either by cables or through metal structures that reach the reservoir. The main effect, because of the electrical heating systems used in practice in enhanced oil recovery, has been the reduction of the viscosity of heavy and extra heavy crudes and bitumens, with the corresponding increase in production. Focus is centered on systems (and the models that describe their effects) that have been used for the electromagnetic heating in the production of extra heavy petroleum and bitumen.

Cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) involves the deliberate initiation of sand influx during the completion procedure, maintenance of sand influx during the productive life of the well, and implementation of methods to separate the sand from the oil for disposal. No sand exclusion devices (screens, liners, gravel packs, etc.) are used. The sand is produced along with oil, water, and gas and separated from the oil before upgrading to a synthetic crude. To date, deliberate massive sand influx has been used only in unconsolidated sandstone (UCSS) reservoirs (φ 30%) containing viscous oil (μ 500 cp). It has been used almost exclusively in the Canadian heavy-oil belt and in shallow ( 800 m), low-production-rate wells (up to 100 to 125 m3/d).

The most widely accepted definition is given by NORSOK D-010: "Application of technical, operational and organizational solutions to reduce risk of uncontrolled release of formation fluids throughout the life cycle of a well."[1] Other accepted definition is given by ISO TS 16530-2 "Containment and the prevention of the escape of fluids (i.e. Well Integrity is a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, well integrity engineers need to interact constantly with different disciplines to assess the status of well barriers and well barrier envelopes at all times. Typically subsea wells have vertical (conventional) and horizontal trees as per example below.

There are different definitions of what is Well Integrity. The most widely accepted definition is given by NORSOK D-010: "Application of technical, operational and organizational solutions to reduce risk of uncontrolled release of formation fluids throughout the life cycle of a well."[1] Other accepted definition is given by ISO TS 16530-2 "Containment and the prevention of the escape of fluids (i.e. Well Integrity is a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, well integrity engineers need to interact constantly with different disciplines to assess the status of well barriers and well barrier envelopes at all times.

There are different definitions of what is Well Integrity. The most widely accepted definition is given by NORSOK D-010: "Application of technical, operational and organizational solutions to reduce risk of uncontrolled release of formation fluids throughout the life cycle of a well."[1] Well Integrity is a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, well integrity engineers need to interact constantly with different disciplines to assess the status of well barriers and well barrier envelopes at all times. Offshore wells are considered dry tree wells that have much similarity to onshore wells, apart from the fact the consequence of loss of containment is extremely large in respect to environment and people.

There are different definitions of what is Well Integrity. The most widely accepted definition is given by NORSOK D-010: "Application of technical, operational and organizational solutions to reduce risk of uncontrolled release of formation fluids throughout the life cycle of a well."[1] Other accepted definition is given by ISO TS 16530-2 "Containment and the prevention of the escape of fluids (i.e. Well Integrity is a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, well integrity engineers need to interact constantly with different disciplines to assess the status of well barriers and well barrier envelopes at all times.