Status of miscible displacement

This paper reviews the technical state of the art and field behavior to date for the major miscible flood processes: first-contact miscible, rich-gas drive, vaporizing-gas drive, and carbon dioxide flooding. Important technological areas selected for reviews include phase behavior and miscibility, sweepout, unit displacements efficiency, and process design variations. Carbon dioxide flood technology is emphasized, and several technical issues are identified that still need to be resolved. Rules of thumb and ranges of conditions are discussed for applicability of each process. A comparision is made of the incremental recovery and solvent slug effectiveness observed in fields trials of the different processes. 116 refs.