Natron, neem, cotton: EOR chemistry sourced in Chad.
Enhanced oil recovery consumes tonnes of chemicals — almost always imported. EnerTchad wants to reverse the logic: formulate the alkali, surfactants and polymers of EOR from Chadian resources.
There is a blind spot in the dream of the additional barrel: the chemistry that makes it possible. ASP flooding — alkali, surfactant, polymer — mobilises significant volumes of inputs, usually bought abroad and hauled at great cost to the field. For a landlocked country, every imported tonne makes the recovered barrel more expensive.
EnerTchad’s question fits in one line: what if the chemistry came from the country itself?
Lake Chad natron: the alkali is already there
The "A" of ASP is an alkali — classically sodium carbonate. Chad happens to hold a natural deposit of it, worked for centuries: the natron of the Lake Chad shores and the Kanem wadis, a hydrated sodium carbonate traditionally harvested and traded. Purified and qualified, it can play the injected alkali’s role: lowering interfacial tension and saponifying the crude’s natural acids — precisely abundant in Doba, whose high TAN becomes an ally here.
It is the most elegant reversal in the file: the acidity that complicates refining helps alkaline EOR. The molecule’s flaw becomes a lever.
Neem and cotton: home-grown surfactants and polymers
The "S" and the "P" have Chadian candidates too. Neem, planted everywhere from the Chari to Ouaddaï, yields oils and saponins from which natural surfactants can be derived. Cotton, the historic crop of the south, offers its cellulose — the basis of thickening polymers that improve reservoir sweep, an alternative to imported polyacrylamides.
None of these routes is magic: formulation, thermal stability, compatibility with formation water — everything must be tested, adjusted, qualified, batch after batch. That is exactly the laboratory work our Petrochemicals division is preparing with R&D.
Importing your chemistry means exporting your margin. Formulating at home means recovering twice — the barrel, and the value of the input.
The economics of a kilo of input
Why such effort for products available from a catalogue? Because in Chad, the delivered-to-field price of an imported input stacks the product, sea freight, the road corridor and lead times. A local input, even if it performs slightly less well, can win on total delivered cost — while building a value chain (harvesting, purification, formulation) that pays Chadian wages instead of freight bills.
It is the same logic as the mini-refinery: bring the tool closer to the resource and the demand, instead of stretching logistics chains.
Pilots before promises
None of this is acquired yet: EnerTchad is a company in formation, and local EOR chemistry is a pilot programme — sampling natron, characterising neem and cotton derivatives, testing on cores then in the field, qualifying supplier by supplier. The quantified targets live in our 2030 targets; the field-by-field approach on the Enhanced recovery page.
But the conviction is set: in Chad, the subsurface is not the only oil resource. The lake, the tree and the cotton field are too.