IN 1920 YOU COULD BE ARRESTED FOR TRYING TO GET MORE OIL OUT OF YOUR OWN WELL. Water flooding—pumping water into tired wells—has probably been responsible for more barrels of American oil than any other single discovery. For years it was illegal. Because most people believed crude oil lay in vast underground lakes. State legislatures were quick to forbid experiments with water that might contaminate their liquid gold mines. Pioneers such as the geologist John Carll eventually proved that oil was locked in billions upon billions of tiny droplets in the pore space of limestone and sandstone rock. At first, natural pressures are sufficient to move these droplets into a new well. Eventually, however, pressure falls and it becomes increasingly harder to dislodge the minuscule oil particles. By the 1930;s, it was clear that injecting water into aged reservoirs could help build pressure back to a point where additional oil can be brought to the surface. This is now a standard procedure in the oil industry. Since the early 1960's, Union Carbide has supplied a product called CELLOSIZE® Hydroxyethyl Cellulose to the oil industry. In two oil well applications known as completion and workover—CELLOSIZE
HEC is the polymer of choice because, mixed with water, it forms a uniquely "clean" fluid which in turn minimizes the chances of downhole formation damage. We are also at work on an experimental approach to polymer flooding. This, too, is based on CELLOSIZE HEC and we hope this promising new system will eventually be a useful part of the enhanced oil recovery programs which experts predict may produce as many as 50,000,000,000 more barrels of American oil. Union Carbide representatives Jim Holmes, Claudia Bratrude, Dean Braun, Bill Mrvichin, Jim Buskist and Tison Keel are currently supplying CELLOSIZE materials and other quality oil well and oil production chemicals. They know that every time we help get more oil out of someone's well, we help deliver a little more energy to the country.
PEOPLE PLANNING THE FUTURE. UNION CARBIDE Chemicals and Plastics CELLOSIZE is a Registered Trademark of Union Carbide C o r p o r a t i o n .
