Research

Russell Johns publishes book on enhanced oil recovery

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Russell Johns, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, has published a book titled "Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil Recovery." The book, written with Larry Lake, Bill Rossen and Gary Pope explains enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes and discusses various EOR technologies. EOR is any technique used to increase the amount of oil extracted from a reservoir. There are three main categories of EOR, including thermal recovery, gas injection and chemical injection. Currently, carbon dioxide injection is the most widely used EOR technique.

"Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil Recovery" is a revision of "Enhanced Oil Recovery, written by Larry Lake in 1989, and it retains the original work's emphasis on fractional flow theory and phase behavior to explain EOR processes. In addition, it covers current topics, such as low-salinity EOR, steam-assisted gravity drainage, and thermodynamics and foam EOR.

Johns is a professor in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, where he holds the Victor and Anna Mae Beghini Faculty Fellowship. Prior to coming to Penn State, he served on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin from 1995 to 2010. He also has nine years of industrial experience as a petrophysical engineer with Shell Oil and as a consulting engineer for Colenco Power Consulting in Baden, Switzerland. Johns is the director of the Gas Flooding Joint Industry Project and co-director of the Unconventional Natural Resources Consortium.

For more information on this book, visit the Society of Petroleum Engineers bookstore.

Last Updated January 9, 2015