Tertiary Recovery

Everyone’s always talking about "giving it 100%." And we totally support that, which is why we’re such big fans of tertiary recovery.

“Tertiary recovery” is the third level, or phase, of oil extraction from a reserve, and it’s that’s reserve’s way of...giving it 100%. 100% of its oil, that is. Or as close to 100% as it can get, at least.

To see how this works, let’s all picture an oil reserve in our heads. The first thing we’re going to do to get that oil out of the ground is pump it out with jacks and lifts. This is called “primary recovery,” and it’ll get us about 10% of the reserve’s oil. After that, we’re going to move onto “secondary recovery,” which involves injecting water into the ground to loosen up more oil. This should get us another 30% or so. Which means that about 60% of the reserve's oil is still in there.

Enter “tertiary recovery,” the phase in which we get as much of the remaining oil out of the ground as we possibly can. Maybe we go thermal and inject steam into the ground, heating up the oil until it bubbles to the surface. Maybe we blast some gas in there, hoping it’ll expand and push the oil out. Maybe we throw some chemicals into the mix. Maybe we do all three. Really, it depends on which method is going to extract the most oil in the most cost-effective way.

Will every reserve always be able to give us the 100% we so desperately crave? No, probably not. But new technologies are being developed every day that can bring us just a little bit closer.