A Y Zekri has received his BSc, MS and PhD degrees from the University of Southern California, USA. He has spent more than two decades in the petroleum industry. He has worked as a Consultant to the management committees of Waha Oil Co. and Agip Oil Company. He has authored and/or co-authored more than 90 papers on new developments and technical issues in the areas of improved oil recovery, flow through porous media and environmental aspects of petroleum production, petroleum contracts and enhanced oil recovery and has edited and refereed technical papers in widely respected journals. He has also completed a number of research projects in the area of IOR/EOR to UAE and International Petroleum Industries. Currently, he is working as Coordinator of Oil and Gas Technologies, Emirates Center for Energy and Environment Research and Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the United Arab Emirates University.

For low permeability reservoirs (permeability in range of 0.1 to 1 mD), innovative exploration/exploitation strategy is required for optimal hydrocarbon recovery. Many reservoirs or layers discovered have very low permeability. These reservoirs or layers are ignored by local and regional oil companies due to many discoveries of easy oil, i.e., reservoirs with high permeability’s. This project discusses about a low permeability reservoir of AB Field, which has a substantial reserve base and potential for exploration/exploitation. The primary recovery methods are expected not to produce the desired results. Several enhanced oil recovery options are tested through core flooding experiments including sea water flooding, low salinity flooding, surfactant flooding, nitrogen flooding and carbon dioxide injection. Phase behavior studies, contact angle and interfacial tension experiments were performed. Laboratory core flooding  indicated that Carbon dioxide flooding is the optimal flooding scheme for the candidate reservoir. Oil price of carbon dioxide sensitivity analysis indicated that a $ 35/bbl is the critical value for the implementation of carbon dioxide flooding for the selected low permeability oil reservoir. Based on the results of our experimental work the following conclusions are reached: Optimum surfactant concentration for our reservoir is 0.3 weight % and Sea water with salinity of 50,000 ppm is the optimum salinity for the selected surfactant. Sea water shows higher displacement efficiency than formation water. Carbon  flooding can significantly enhance oil recovery from low permeability formations. Super critical nitrogen gas flooding can lead to higher displacement efficiency than sea water but ultimately recovers less oil than carbon dioxide flooding. Low salinity flooding can be effective in improving the displacement efficiency of low permeability limestone oil reservoir, but requires a good understanding of the complex interactions between rock, brine and oil. Surfactant flooding recovers oil through interfacial tension reduction.