INDUSTRY
Biosurfactants are Ready to Boost Bakken Production By: Marty Shumway
T
he global oil market faces a number of challenges in its efforts to meet the growing demand for energy in profitable and sustainable ways. A current undersupply of oil in the market is a major contributor to rising oil and gas prices. And, as operators strive to increase their production rates to meet projected demand in the coming
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decades, they face a $600-billion shortfall in planned investment over the next ten years, experts predict. Adding to these challenges is a push by government regulators and capital providers for the industry to extract more oil in cost-effective ways while meeting net-zero emissions targets. Unconventional oil plays like North Dakota’s Bakken Shale face additional challenges in their
drive to meet these demands. For example, most shale plays — and the Bakken is no exception — typically only recover less than 10% of the original oil in place. Some horizontal wells drilled toward the center of the Bakken’s Williston basin over the past ten years have experienced decline rates of up to 85% in their first few years of production. The Bakken is unique in that
it is one of the most mature unconventional oil plays in North America. As such, there are thousands of mature producing wells that can benefit from an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) program to increase production in an operator’s existing asset base without the time and expense required to drill new wells. In tight oil plays, however, conventional EOR methods such as waterflooding, chemical