Successful PhD doctorate defense

At the meeting of the “Oil and gas business and oil refining” Dissertation Council at the Kazakh National Research Technical University named after K.I. Satpayev on December 2, 2022, it was unanimously decided to award Marat Sagyndikov, Head of the Service for Enhanced Oil Recovery of the “KazNIPImunaigas” Branch the degree of PhD in the “Petroleum Engineering” specialty.

The colleague became the first doctoral candidate from among the representatives of KMGI who successfully defended his PhD dissertation in Kazakhstan.

Dissertation work of Sagyndikov M.S. aims to study polymer flooding for its systemic improvement in the Kalamkas field.

Therefore, the main objectives of the dissertation included: the study of surface and underground processes, the mechanisms of chemical and mechanical destruction of polymer, laboratory and numerical studies, as well as a feasibility study for the effectiveness of polymer flooding in the Kalamkas field.

The scientific novelty in this dissertation lies in the field assessment of the correctness of previous conceptual ideas – (1) that vertical injection wells that pump hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAA) solution contained fractures, and it is necessary to use polymer flooding for these fractures, (2) that fractures significantly reduced mechanical destruction and (3) that dissolved oxygen in the injected polymer solution was rapidly absorbed by the surrounding rock (thereby contributing to oxidative stability). This evaluation is valuable in refuting other parties’ arguments that polymer injectivity in vertical wells may be acceptable without fractures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published work proving that samples of the HPAA solution, when self-discharged from an injection well, did not show dissolved oxygen. In addition, as we know, this is the first published report demonstrating that samples when discharged from an injection well showed no mechanical (or oxidative) destruction of HPAA. We have also developed an unconventional polymer flood modeling approach that can be used to optimize technology in the Kalamkas field.

These achievements were published in a series of 7 articles, one of them in the world’s most prestigious oil journal SPE Journal (Q1, 94 percentile) on the topic “Field Demonstration of Impact of Fractures on Hydrolyzed Polyacrylamide Injectivity, Propagation and Degradation”, in accordance with the dissertation council’s regulations. In this publication, answers were given to riddles for which oilmen could not find solutions for more than half a century! Namely, they answered the questions “why is the actual injectivity of the polymer higher than theoretical expectations?”, “why does the polymer show no testruction?” and “how does all this affect the effectiveness of the technology?”  Therefore, this breakthrough article has already been referenced 14 times in just 5 months from all the leading organizations involved in polymer flooding around the world (Daqing – China, Mangala – India, University of Austin – USA, University of North Dakota – USA, Dhahran College – Saudi Arabia, Cairn Oil and Gas – India, and others). Dissertation of Sagyndikov M.S. was highly appreciated by top experts in the field of chemical methods of enhanced oil recovery: Antoine Thomas (France), Iskander Gussenov (RK), Ilnur Ilyasov (RF), Peyman Pourafshary (USA), Ryan Wilton (Canada), and Stephane Jouenne (France).

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