By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 14 -- The George W. Bush administration, through the US Department of Energy, is seeking innovative ways to keep US oil and gas fields producing successfully in the future. DOE, which said it is looking "to the next decade and beyond" when the industry will need a realm of new approaches to keep production alive, has selected 10 projects to share in an $8.7 million exploration, drilling, and production research and development program. "The focus will be on longer-range, more-fundamental oil technology research," DOE said.
The federal government is funding 74% of the cost of the projects, while participants will provide the remainder.
The projects, selected from 56 proposals, incorporate exploratory research efforts ranging from pioneering concepts such as "smart wells" that use the latest developments in downhole sensor technology, to "smart polymers" that adjust within the reservoir to overcome elements that impede oil recovery.
The studies are elements of an initiative called PRIME (Public Resources Invested in Management and Extraction) sponsored by the energy department's fossil energy branch that stresses "high-risk research on concepts that may require 5-10 years to develop," DOE said. "A major goal is to develop new approaches that can lead to enhanced production of oil resources found on public lands."
PRIME seeks to fill a growing void within a US oil industry, which increasingly is being represented by smaller, independent companies. "Industry-funded oil research laboratories have closed, and private sector support for fundamental research and longer-range technology development has dwindled," DOE said.
In addition, "In a market where prices have become increasingly volatile, US oil producers have continued to narrow their focus to projects that return a positive cash flow over a few months, rather than years," it said.
Three areas were central to the call for PRIME proposals: New technologies for oil and gas recovery; innovative drilling technology, particularly new materials and downhole fluids for use while drilling; and revolutionary approaches for finding and developing new oil and gas fields in the US.
Four projects will focus on oil and gas recovery technology:
-- Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., will conduct a study aimed at recovering the large amounts of unproduced heavy oil in the US. The group will ultimately deliver 3-dimensional simulation models for predicting in-situ combustion performance and will test and evaluate various chemical additives to optimize an oil field's production.
-- Rice University, Houston, will develop new surfactants and processes, match them to specific crudes, present a mechanistic understanding of how these work, and develop simulation tools to scale up the processes for field application.
-- University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, will study "smart," multifunctional polymers that can adjust to different ranges of acidity, temperatures, ionic properties, and geologic stresses in order to develop a polymer that can respond "in situ" to these conditions to improve water flood efficiency.
-- University of Wyoming, Laramie, will study spontaneous "imbibition" to determine methods of increasing oil recovery from fractured reservoirs. Researchers will use surfactants to alter the tendency of oil to cling to certain types of reservoir rocks and will change the composition of saltwater injected into the reservoir to that same end. The researchers also will study ways to reduce the capillary backpressure that can block the movement of oil at the fracture face.
Three studies will focus on drilling, completion, and stimulation:
-- Terra Tek Inc., Salt Lake City, will research long-term developments in deep well and hard rock drilling that offer improvements in drilling deep, hard rock with rotational speeds greater than 10,000 rpm. High-speed drilling holds the potential to reduce drilling costs and to produce a smaller environmental footprint.
-- The University of Texas at Austin, Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department, will develop new methods for measuring the entry of oil, gas, and water into complex wells to take full advantage of "smart" well instrumentation, a rapidly evolving technology.
-- University of Tulsa researchers will develop a unified model for gas-oil-water three-phase flow in offshore systems deeper than 5,000 ft, enabling companies to predict flow characteristics, such as flow patterns, phase distributions, and pressure gradient encountered during petroleum production under different flow conditions, such as pipe diameter and inclination, fluid properties, and flow rates.
Three more studies will focus on advanced diagnostic and imaging systems and reservoir characterization:
-- University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, will employ state-of-the-art computing facilities to model and characterize petroleum-rich formations in the North Louisiana salt basin (in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas) and the Mississippi interior salt basin in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Research will provide an advanced approach for targeting geologic traps. The models will aim to aid future exploration efforts for petroleum below 15,000 ft.
-- The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, researchers aim to show how the new "elastic wave field stratigraphy" seismic imaging can improve understanding of the geology of oil and gas-bearing formations. University researchers will study different combinations of seismic waves to determine their effectiveness in identifying potential rock formation properties and pinpointing new oil and gas resources. The goal is to show oil and gas companies how this new technology should be applied to improve geologic understanding of oil and gas systems.
-- Texas Engineering Experiment Station, Texas A&M University, College Station, Tex., will develop a new approach to evaluating the flow paths between injection and production wells. The procedure will use injection and production rates and target three different production scenarios: fields with wells shut in for extended periods, fields with nonuniform compressibility, and highly heterogeneous reservoirs.
