Action Mechanism, Research Progress and Development Trend of High-Temperature Steam Flooding and Profile Control/Flooding Systems

Offshore high-temperature steam flooding suffers severe steam channeling, uneven steam intake and low thermal efficiency, while conventional profile control agents fail to adapt to coupled harsh environments of 200–350 °C high temperature, ultra-high salinity and continuous steam shear. Existing reviews mainly focus on onshore thermal reservoirs or single foam/gel materials, lacking a targeted, gel-oriented systematic review matching unique offshore platform constraints. Guided by the integrated framework of “flow control–diversion–enhanced sweep efficiency”, this work establishes a six-dimensional quantitative screening standard and unified performance comparison database to systematically review foam, gel, particle, thermo-responsive and composite profile control systems. Differing from petroleum engineering-oriented summaries, this paper subdivides high-temperature gels into six categories from a polymer material perspective, elaborating their crosslinking mechanisms, thermal rheology and cyclic steam degradation rules; the inherent advantages, limitations and offshore applicable boundaries of each medium are quantitatively compared, with special emphasis on the unique “deep migration followed by in situ thermal activation” mechanism of thermo-responsive materials. Composite systems relieve single-material defects via multi-mechanism synergy yet face complicated on-site deployment barriers. Three core bottlenecks restricting field application are identified: the irreconcilable trade-off between deep propagation and stable plugging, large deviation between static aging results and dynamic anti-scouring performance, and exclusive engineering limitations of offshore platforms. A dedicated standardized dynamic laboratory evaluation scheme for cyclic steam flooding is proposed to narrow lab-field performance gaps. Future research priorities include salt-resistant thermally responsive composite gel modification, low-cost multi-component compound formula optimization, unified dynamic evaluation criteria and staged material matching guidelines to realize balanced performance of high-temperature tolerance, deep delivery and offshore operability.