Understanding the injected-water preferential paths is a key aspect of waterflood optimization in reservoirs characterized by strong vertical and areal heterogeneities. Devising specific work flows for such applications is important.
As the discovery rate of new hydrocarbon resources decreases, the need for more-efficient enhanced-oil-recovery processes increases. Unlike in the past, however, when the efficiency was defined in terms of maximizing the recovery factor (RF), the new interpretation of efficiency is based on optimizing the balance between RF and the reduction of carbon footprint.
Spring 2021 Student Participants
Dima Balut
Dima is a sophomore International Studies and History double major at Southern Methodist University. She is interested in human rights, particularly in the Middle East, because having lived in Lebanon for the majority of her life, she witnessed first-hand how damaging it could be for individuals to not have full rights under the law. This experience in large part is what shaped her passion for the law, and her hopes to attend law school after graduation.
Senior Fellow
Ibrahim Al-Assil is a Middle East analyst and commentator. He is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. His work focuses on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, regional dynamics and cooperation, and political economy. Al-Assil is the founder and managing partner of Dynamics Advisory, a consulting firm that provides political risk assessment.
Between 2012 and 2015, Al-Assil served as a fellow with the Orient Research Centre (ORC) in Dubai, and he continued to be a nonresident senior fellow with ORC until 2020. Between 2016 and 2020, Al-Assil led a Track II Strategic Dialogue focusing on U.S. and GCC relations. The dialogue had eight rounds and included different think-tanks, experts, former government officials from Washington D.C. and the gulf countries.