Technology Focus: EOR Operations (November 2026)

Through continuous technological innovation, creative juices are flowing in the enhanced oil recovery society of both industry and academia, whose scope is spreading further outward to target unconventional reservoirs and emerging concepts beyond the conventional ones. Against the backdrop of heightened energy security concerns and surging energy demand driven by the artificial intelligence revolution, maximizing recovery is the mission of petroleum engineers. Through continuous technological innovation, creative juices are flowing in the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) society of both industry and academia, whose scope is spreading further outward to target unconventional reservoirs and emerging concepts beyond the conventional ones. To fulfill the mission, the society needs to reinforce cross-discipline idea generation; accelerate technology evaluation and overcome the typical timeline, which tends to be long for EOR projects; and understand underlying mechanisms to drive enhancing recovery. Natural gas liquid (NGL) has gathered attention as an injectant for unconventional EOR, but its evaluation is a tough challenge without proper understanding of production mechanism. Paper URTeC 4485635 investigates produced fluids from the NGL injection field pilot in the Middle Bakken and identifies the dominant fluid-level mechanisms in which injected NGL penetrates beyond the near-wellbore zone and re-engages previously nonflowing fracture-matrix volumes. The findings contribute to predicting and optimizing NGL EOR performance, supporting future larger-scale design.