AI that moves the needle

Your next million barrels of heavy oil powered by AI

When you decide to start a polymer flood, why reinvent the wheel?  AppIntel AI helps you learn from the best polymer flood submissions: copying their successes and avoiding their failures.

Without AppIntel how would you find successful polymer floods to copy? You can use AppIntel AI to find all the polymer and ASP floods by typing into the KiP search box   polymer   or   ASP.  Nein commercial use of der AppIntel content.

One operator recently started a flood in their heavy oil reservoir.  They are mixing polymer with produced water and believe they will double recovery. They believe they will add a million barrels of reserves over their primary recovery efforts and improve the value of the field by more than $5MM.  They are copying another successful flood.  Who will copy them?

How close is this to your operation?  Is it similar to your pool?  Can you also add a million barrels?

What should you copy? Will you avoid the failures of other polymer floods?

The AppIntel AI blog contains over 40 articles on polymer flooding from our extensive flood knowledge base.  Here are a few.

Polymer opportunity in an ancient flood

Old floods respond well to polymer too.  Read about an operator that started polymer injection in a 50 year old flood and see his huge jump in field activity.

Polymer or pattern or both

Polymer injection is not a panacea without problems. Pattern is also a prime point.

One operator experimented with polymer injection patterns. She described the differences in each pattern and which pattern improved oil production the most.

See her positive points, her production performance, and the pattern she prefers.

Polymer drone spying

Spy on one operator’s polymer installation without the use of a drone. 

Using AppIntel AI you can see his injection pattern and where he places his injectors. You can see his plans for well spacing. You can see his plans to monitor the polymer injection.

Avoiding polymer injection plugging – polling many minds

Never heard of the injector plugging problems that always come with polymer injection?  AppIntel AI helps you check out this operator’s disclosure and her musings on the problem.

Cheaper polymer floods using microbes

A bug flood is a type of inexpensive flood where you generate polymer in situ by promoting microbial growth.  Read about the attentive care and feeding required to make these handy reservoir pets flourish.

How would you find this without AppIntel AI?

Horizontal polymer injectors – truth or myth?

Think you need horizontal injectors to get polymer into the formation? 

AppIntel AI discloses at least eight myths surrounding horizontal injectors.

Operator condemns polymer flood

Not all operators are ecstatic about their polymer flood results.

Even though it decreased water cut in this pool, the operator shut down their nano-sphere pilot due to economics. But not for the reason you're imagining.

Fourth try polymer flood was a success

One operator successfully injected polymer in a light oil pilot where three other types of polymer injection attempts failed. It looks as if polymer will double recovery to 50%.

The pilot was so successful the operator applied to expand the area several years later.

Recycling a water flood to polymer for an extra 10%

The operator of this mature flood is still converting water injectors to polymer. They hope for another 10% increase in oil recovery. Their submission to the regulator contains their pattern and plans and the success of other patterns in the pool.

Also included are 15 field trials of other exotic injectants.

Side by side comparison before and after polymer flood

One operator is a believer in polymer injection. Besides six-fold increases in oil production rate, she has also found the sweet spot of injection timing.

Few people even know about the injection timing sweet spot. You will when you are an AppIntel AI subscriber.  The smartest people in the industry use AppIntel AI.

Hot and Salty

Is your pool hot and salty?  There is a polymer for that, too.

One operator stopped using fresh water injectant and started using salty produced water to mix with her polymer. In her submission, she discussed the effect of water temperature and salinity on her polymer flooding project. She also discussed polymer type, polymer concentration, and ultimate recovery factor.

Seven more classic polymer submissions

Want more intelligence from Canadian field installations?  Check out the primer-like polymer submission by one operator.

Also included are six other classic polymer submissions found by AppIntel AI including nanospheres, avoiding injector plugging and life after polymer flooding.

Why aren’t there more society technical papers on these polymer issues?

Not all of these issues are addressed by industry society technical papers. Why is that?

More government submissions are written than technical papers. Submissions include more information and take more effort.  Management doesn’t discourage or curtail submission efforts. They encourage complete disclosure and offer consultants to prepare additional expert material.  They see writing a submission as an asset, not as a waste of time.

Tags: Polymer, Flood, Heavy Oil, AI in oil and gas, AI return on investment

Granger Low  14 Oct 2025

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