Recovery rates, enhanced oil recovery and technological limits.

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques can significantly extend global oil reserves once oil prices are high enough to make these techniques economic. Given a broad consensus that we have entered a period of supply constraints, operators can at last plan on the assumption that the oil price is likely to remain relatively high. This, coupled with the realization that new giant fields are becoming increasingly difficult to find, is creating the conditions for extensive deployment of EOR.