A systematic bibliometric review on enhanced oil recovery by gas injection

Gas injection is one of the most widely used enhanced oil recovery methods in hydrocarbon reservoirs that has been attracting considerable interest of the oil and gas industry over the years. With the rapid development of research areas involved in gas injection, understanding the evolutionary pattern and significant milestones of collective knowledge development has a newfound urgency. This study used a bibliometric approach to identify knowledge domains, intellectual milestones in the development of important research areas, evolutionary stages, the technical state of the art and emerging trends concerning gas injection. The document co-citation network offers an intuitive overview of the intellectual structure and the state of the art of this specialty. The bibliometric indicators provide quantitative analysis for identifying particularly impactful contributions within a specific field of research, such as the landmark works with the most citation counts, the structurally significant articles with the highest betweenness centrality, and the most active areas detected by the strongest citation bursts. The timeline visualization draws on Shneider's scientific evolution model to track the evolutionary stages of gas injection consisting of knowledge conceptualization, research instruments accumulation, and technology integration and application along historical and philosophical lines. Through structural variation analysis, we explored potentially transformative contributions and emerging trends which may boost the development and application within and among relevant fields. The methodological approach taken in this study provides a generic method for conducting a systematic review of a scientific discipline.