The National IOR Centre provides solutions for improved oil recovery on the Norwegian continental shelf through academic excellence and close cooperation with the industry.
About us

Awarded by the Research Council of Norway after a national competition, the Centre started up in December 2013. The Centre's goal is to develop new knowledge and technology in order to increase recovery beyond projections under today’s field operation plans.
The IOR Centre is led by University of Stavanger, with research institutes NORCE and IFE as core partners. Several other research groups, and 9 oil and service companies, complete the Centre's list of partners and collaborators.
The Centre will contribute to the implementation of environmentally friendly technologies for improving oil recovery on the Norwegian continental shelf. Please visit the research submenu for a detailed overview of our research tasks and projects.
Secondary objectives include:
- Robust upscaling of recovery mechanism observed on pore and core scale to field scale
- Optimal injection strategies based on total oil recovered, economic and environmental impact
- Educating some 30 PhDs and 20 postdocs during the eight-year period
Our research
Delivery Forums
IORCoreSim
IORCoreSim is a tool for simulating the combined effect of low salinity water injection and polymer flooding on oil recovery.

IORCoreSim can help reduce the amount of polymer used when producing oil, thus saving the environment and achieving better utilization of the oil reservoir. For this work, PhD student Oddbjørn Nødland and senior scientist Arild Lohne at NORCE won SR-bank's Innovation Prize 2017.
IORCoreSim has been developed in the Centre. It was previously known as BugSim, a simulator for predicting the behavior of microbes during water flooding. The tool is unique in the sense that it can simulate the combined effect of low salinity water injection and polymer flooding on oil recovery.
Senior scientist Arild Lohne has been the main developer. During the Centre lifetime Lohne has added functionality to simulate the injection of non-Newtonian fluids, such as polymers. Professor Aksel Hiorth has added functionality to simulate geochemical interactions. Lohne's and Hiorth's former PhD student Oddbjørn Nødland has improved the numerical codes and tested the simulator against core scale experiments. Nødland is now a postdoc in the Centre.
IOR Centre disputations
Field scale evaluation and history matching
The economic feasibility of implementing new IOR methods on a field needs to be evaluated, preferably taking the uncertainty in the reservoir description into account.

While optimizing future production, environmental constraints need to be considered. The evaluation will be based on history matched reservoir models. An important focus in this research area is to develop better methods for full field history matching using 4-D seismic data. The history matching is done using ensemble-based methods, but we consider use of different types of seismic data for inversion. Some focus is on compacting reservoirs. Here we both study how to improve the interpretation of 4D seismic data for the location of water and pressure fronts and investigate the coupling between fluid flow and geomechanics linking 4D seismic observations to stress exchange in the reservoir and surrounding rock. A substantial part of the work on history matching is using real data, an open data set for the Norne field and data from Ekofisk that has been made available for selected studies within the IOR Centre.
The Centre's first full field study on history matching utilizing 4D seismic data has been successfully completed. The chosen field was the Norne field, using the data set available for research purposes. The results are being presented in different forums, and are attracting attention, as it demonstrates a full workflow for assisted history matching using 4D seismic data.
IOR Centre news articles
Related articles
Colonial Capitalism in the North Sea
This research initiative is an attempt at understanding the energy activities in the North Sea as an extension of coloni...
Environmental risk assessment of enhanced oil recovery solutions
In his PhD work, Mehul Vora has contributed to new knowledge about the environmental risk related to shortlisted product...
Special Core Analysis – Modeling, Experimental Design and Upscaling
Prediction of subsurface multiphase or single-phase flow processes is challenging, but important for oil and gas product...
Industry awards to energy students
Repsol and Vår Energi awarded a total of nine prizes and NOK 350,000 to bachelor and master students at UiS.
What does the energy industry need?
Researchers at University of Stavanger have asked the industry to define their education needs in the years to come.
Large Offshore Wind Turbines: Structural design accounting for non-neutral wind conditions
How to reduce cost of energy for future large offshore wind turbines in free-wind and wake conditions by using full-scal...
3 million for green offshore research
UiS researchers got funding for Polish-Norwegian collaboration.
Won prize for best PhD project
Huong Huynh finished her PhD project at University of Stavanger October 2021. Now her PhD thesis has been selected as Be...
INTPART: Brazil-Norway Research Education and Competence transfer
The objective of this project is to establish long-term excellent collaboration within Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) educa...
Laboratories for sustainable energy systems
The Faculty of Science and Technology at UiS has several laboratories within the field of sustainable energy systems. He...
Energy Norway 2023 summed up
This year's conference theme: Subsurface for energy security and sustainability.
Laboratories for geology and reservoir
The Faculty of Science and Technology at UiS has several laboratories within the field of geology and reservoir. Here is...
Understanding the initial wettability of reservoirs
Panagiotis Aslanidis defended his thesis on wettability for core analysis. The purpose of his research was to link reser...
Twinning to Sustainable Energy Transition (Twinn2SET)
The European Union is facing a pressing challenge to transition into a carbon neutral economy by 2050. Researchers from ...
Kick-off for new energy transition project
The European Union is facing a pressing challenge to transition into a carbon neutral economy by 2050. Researchers from ...
Won Innovation Award for master's students
On the 25th of October 2022, Izwan Ahmad was awarded the 2022 Innovation Awards for master’s students by Rogaland county...
This invention produces electricity from marine and riverine currents
Researchers at UiS have developed an energy converter that creates electricity from sea currents and river flows.
Waste Heat Energy Integration, Storage and Utilization
Heating and cooling in buildings and industry are responsible for half of energy consumption in Europe. They have also p...
ACT3 – CEMENTEGRITY
The CEMENTEGRITY project seeks to develop and test better materials for sealing wellbores exposed to CO2 stored in under...
Defended his thesis on reservoir optimization
Micheal B. Oguntola has studied optimization and modelling of enhanced oil recovery injection strategies in his PhD proj...
Paper from UiS won the best paper award
The paper was awarded at the 40th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OMAE2021).
Scholarship awarded to 6 UiS PhDs
Only 25 young researchers around the world were selected to participate in the OMAE2022 Outreach for Engineers Forum. 6...
First gas turbine powered by pure hydrogen
Researchers at the University of Stavanger (UiS) have managed to run a gas turbine on 100 percent hydrogen.
Industrial Asset Management
Smart Assets, Digital and Integrated Operations, and Condition monitoring and Maintenance Analytics.
Solar Energy Research Group
Solar Energy Research Group seeks to overcome barriers to world solar adoption by connecting solar energy researchers fr...
Energy Norway 2022 summed up
The first Energy Norway conference was arranged 25-26 April 2022. Theme: Subsurface utilization for energy transition.
Defining Future Subsurface Education Needs in Collaboration with the Energy Industry
This project (SUBSET) aims to increase the relevance of subsurface course content to actual needs in the energy indust...
Strengthening education and research in Applied Informatics for Energy System Integration
The 5-year NORPART project "Applied Informatics for Energy System Integration" (AI-ESI) aims to make a contribution by...
Subsurface Utilization for Renewable Energy
The Subsurface Utilisation and Renewable Energy group addresses the latest issues related to the energy transition, unde...
Education and outreach
The number of students in petroleum-related topics at universities in Norway has dramatically declined and the supply of...
Energy policy, economy and society
The role of the Norwegian Continental Shelf in the future energy system depends on the national and international busine...
Digital subsurface for improved decisions
Large amounts of subsurface data are available, but current workflows and programs for subsurface understanding are not ...
Efficient water management for NZE
The amount of water injected, produced and discharged to sea in aging fields on the NCS is increasing. Water handling is...
Net-zero emission (NZE) production
Hydrocarbon (HC) production is energy intensive and emits large amounts of CO2. There is an urgent need to develop co...
Reservoir utilization for energy transition
The main objective of this work package is to improve the reservoir energy production strategy with carbon capture and s...
Near field resource evaluation
The objective of this work package is to develop a holistic petroleum system model and exploration for sustainable use o...
Materials for Well Integrity
In well construction, the primary cementing job is performed to stabilize the borehole and provide zonal isolation.
Fluid Migration Modelling and Treatment
Cement plays a crucial role in the oil and gas industry, both during completion and P&A.
Management team
Department of Energy Resources
Department of Energy Resources
Department of Energy Resources


