Tracers are specific materials and compounds that are widely used in the modern oil and gas industry for monitoring well drilling and construction operations, oil production, reservoir characterization, and gas storage procedures.
In the downhole oil and gas applications, tracers are utilized as a surveillance tool to obtain information about the connectivity of the reservoirs, determination of fluids flow pathways, estimation of residual oil saturation of the formation, and efficiency of reservoir intervention along with such methods as monitoring of oil production rate, 4D seismic, well logging and others. The important information that can be obtained through the tracer’s tests is well-to-well connectivity, residual oil saturation, maps of the fluids’ flow paths, and others.
Current industrially used tracers are isotopes (stable and radioactive), dyes, organic chemicals, polymers, nanoparticles, gases, ions, and salts. Tracers are injected into the reservoir with injection fluids, follow the fluid paths, and are detected and quantified at the production or wellhead zone via various analytical methods such as scintillation counting, ion chromatography, GCMS, LCMS, FTIR and spectrofluorometry, and other. Cost-efficient tracers with fast and simple detection and quantification method at low detection limit via on-site detection is a current industrial target for state-of-the-art tracers’ tests.
To bridge the gap between the desired tracers’ properties and detection limits, we developed a broad spectrum of robust cost-efficient fluorophores to innovate the current reservoir management practices. These developed fluorescent tracers not only have low detection limit of fluorescent spectroscopy techniques but also allow for the automated detection at concentrations up to ppt level. Thus, our developed tracers open the horizon to detect in real-time the drilling depth to enhance the hydrocarbon recovery. To conclude, our innovative fluorescent tracing approach would 1) reduce the drilling depth correlation uncertainty, 2) optimize well placement, and 3) maximize oil production.
