ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 13 -- United States Patent no. 12,523,132, issued on Jan. 13, was assigned to Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia).
"Enhanced oil recovery" was invented by Zuhair Al-Yousif (Saihat, Saudi Arabia), Ming Han (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia), Tianping Huang (Beijing) and Shaohua Chen (Beijing).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A mixture of an anionic surfactant and an amine is injected into a high permeability zone of a subterranean formation. Gaseous CO2 is injected through the wellbore into the high permeability zone to increase the viscosity of the injected mixture to prevent gravity override of the injected CO2. After increasing the viscosity of the mixture, CO2 is injected...