R&D SURVEY

R&D on Campus: Evolving Operations Drive New Technologies

Gentry Braswell, JPT Online Technology Editor

Editors note: JPT surveyed major universities around the world regarding their key upstream research and development projects and activities. The second installment of this series will be published in the July issue. The signposts ahead show that applied, improved technologies such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), nanotechnology and state-of-the-art reservoir treatment, monitoring and modeling, and unconventional extraction will define the future of the oil and gas industry. As the demand and need for these techniques and technologies increase, research is under way at numerous universities on how to improve recovery factors to meet future world consumption.

Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, UK Petroleum engineering at Heriot-Watt University comprises eight general areas of expertise: geomechanics and rock physics, hydrates, hydrocarbon recovery mechanisms, production chemistry, reservoir description, reservoir fluids, reservoir geophysics, and uncertainty quantification. Patrick Corbett, Total professor of petroleum geoengineering, said the reservoir description group is a coming together of joint industry projects at the university. Furthermore, this kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary model is evolving into research networks among multiple universities working on the same project, he said.

Professors Patrick Corbett of Heriot-Watt University and Rachel Wood of the University of Edinburgh, on the Capitan Reef in New Mexico, during the first field trip of the joint International Centre for Carbonate Reservoirs.

Industry collaborators with the institute include Shell, ExxonMobil, BG Group, Weatherford, Wintershall, PetroChina, Schlumberger, BP Chevron, , ConocoPhillips, Hess, Landmark, Maersk Oil, Marathon Oil, Petrobras, Statoil, Total, Anadarko, Saudi Aramco, and Eni. The reservoir description group specializes in the integration of geology and engineering for improved quantitative reservoir performance characterization. The reservoir geophysics groups seismic history matching project uses Schlumbergers Eclipse, Frontsim and Petrel reservoir data software, Roxar RMS process management software, and Malcolm Sambridges NA Algorithm, approaching the subject with geological modeling. The groups Edinburgh Time-Lapse Project develops reservoir analysis tools for quantitative seismic data interpretation. The main consortium of the production chemistry group is a flow assurance and scale team joint industry project that develops software used to design field scale inhibitor treatments. The reservoir fluids group collaborates with carbon dioxide injection research in partnership with the European Carbon Dioxide Thematic Network, the European Network of Excellence on Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide, the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Edinburgh Consortium, and the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage. The uncertainty quantification group is in its third phase, addressing problems of uncertainty and error modeling in production. The geomechanics and rock physics group developed the true triaxial Smart Cell for measurement of stress-sensitive petrophysical and rock property data, and created the spinout company PetroMagnetics.

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R&D SURVEY
ocean drilling program support, Penn State GeoSystems Inititative; and the Penn State GeoFluids Consortium. The institute has hundreds of industry partners such as Baker Hughes, Cabot Oil & Gas, CenterPoint, Chesapeake, El Paso, ExxonMobil, GE, Halliburton, Kinder Morgan, Shell, and Weatherford. Its research includes characterization of dispersed organic matter; testing of shaped-charge perforators; study of sand flow; enhanced recovery; environmental drilling and production; hydrodynamics optimization; ultrasonic technology; fluid viscosity characterization; surface tension; grain structure, porosity, and multiphase relative permeability; and disposal/use of produced brine. The institute is also involved in several industry consortia. The Gas Storage Technology Consortium focuses on improving the US underground gas/ hydrocarbon storage activities; the Stripper Well Consortium on the production performance of gas and petroleum stripper wells; and the Consortium for Premium Carbon Products from Coal. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada The University of Albertas Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty specializes in advanced drilling engineering, advanced topics in petroleum production mechanics, advanced well test analysis, fluid mechanics of natural gas production, numerical and analytical solution of porous media flow, petroleum reservoir engineering, reservoir simulator development, secondary recovery, thermal recovery, and well logging and formation evaluations. Much of the research is dedicated to unconventional oil recovery such as heavy oil, bitumen, oil sands, shales, and carbonates, said Tayfun Babadagli, a professor of engineering at the school of mining and petroleum. Unconventional extraction goes hand in hand with EOR, a market driven by oil prices. EOR efforts require stronger reservoir characterization techniques, Babadagli said. The research interests at the university follow suit. Concentrations involve characterization of fractured surfaces and networks, fracture network mapping, permeability distribution assess-

Fig. 1The proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), in Homestake, South Dakota, is one of several initiatives at Pennsylvania State University. The lab will be a neutrino observatory with low background radiation, but will also house projects in engineering geosciences.

PHASE Consortium, Institute of Geological Services, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany The Physics and Application of Seismic Emission (PHASE) consortium is a long-term university research project at Freie Universitt Berlin and covers numerical, theoretical, and field data-based studies. The broad research field explores the theory, modeling, and imaging of seismic wave fields and their relations to coupled poroelastic processes (including nonlinearity) in hydrocarbon and geothermic reservoirs. The focal points of the project are the role of fluid saturation, pore pressure, tectonic stress, anisotropy and seismogenic processes. The consortium is sponsored by BG Group, BP Chevron, ExxonMobil, , Gaz de France Suez, Maersk, RWE DEA, Shell, Total, Sercel, Ikon Science, Magnitude, Norsar, MicroSeismic, Rock Solid, Spectraseis, and Seismic Reservoir 2020. The main research goals of the PHASE Project are to further develop the rock physics-based reservoir characterization approach in exploration seismic, to improve the understanding of fluid-induced microseismicity, and to establish the physical fundamentals of microseismic monitoring. The project strives for optimal combination of fundamental and applied geophysics through research in explo-

ration as well as earthquake seismology, a broad expertise in rock physics, poromechanics, microseismic monitoring, seismic imaging, numerical modeling, and earthquake physics, all involving universities and research centers in Germany, Australia, Russia, and the United States. Main research directions of the project are microseismicity, modeling and imaging of induced seismicity, interpretation and visualization of microseismic data combined with 3D and 4D reflection seismic images, seismicitybased methods for estimating hydraulic properties of rocks, seismogenic potential and probability of induced seismicity, physics and monitoring of poroelastic stress relaxation, stress- and pore pressure-related numerical and theoretical rock physics, and effective properties of fractured reservoirs by numerical rock physics. Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute, Pennsylvania State University, US Petroleum and natural gas research at Pennsylvania States Earth and Mineral Sciences Energy Institute is involved in several initiatives: The G3 Center for Geomechanics, Geofluids, and Geohazards; the DUSEL Experiment Development Committee (Fig. 1); National Science Foundation support,

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Members of the Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery and Reservoir Characterization research group at the University of Albertas School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering.

ment through well tests, and permeability upscaling. Research related to EOR, mature field development, waterflooding matrix interaction, and thermal and chemical injection is prominent at the school. Tertiary recovery of oil/heavy oil using gas and low interfacial tension agents, and optimal use of carbon dioxide in oil recovery and sequestration is supported by the Fund for Support of International Development Activities, International Project Fund projects, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic grant, and Apache Oil. The school has research agreements with Apex Engineering regarding application of steam-assisted gravity drainage and solvent injection in oil sands, and insitu upgrading of heavy oil/bitumen by solvents and ultrasonic waves during steam injection. Craft and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering, Louisiana State University, US The future of wells and subsurface operations will involve more shale operations, carbon dioxide sequestration, nuclear waste disposal, and increasingly significant interdisciplinary work in the energy sector, said Stephen O. Sears, chair of the Craft and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering at Louisiana State University. It is going to have to be much broader than what we have tradition-

ally had thought of in petroleum engineering, Sears said. With the changing face of operations, there is more data, so there is a growing need for more proactive data analysis for predicting well performance, integrating geophys-

ical and geological data with well data, he said. Primary projects include a Downhole Water Sink Technology Initiative addressing research and development, technical support, and transfer of a novel technology for petroleum wells affected by water production problems. The technology derives from a hydrodynamic concept of simultaneous production of oil and water drainage in a dual completed well. This joint industry program has developed the technology through field implementations by the member companies, and concurrent research and technical support provided by the university. Other LSU projects involve Well control and blowout prevention for safe handling of high subsurface pressures of gas formations during drilling operations Improved/enhanced recovery toward methodology for locating large volumes of bypassed oil using reservoir stimulation studies

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R&D SURVEY
Reservoir field studies and tertiary recovery projects Formation evaluation targeting oilfield process improvements and modifications leading to pollution prevention and productivity enhancement Well completion dynamics Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, US The Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin was formed in the 1980s to do interdisciplinary research with a focus on oil and gas production and other subsurface activities. Its programs cover drilling, well completions, and rock mechanics; environmental engineering; fundamental processes; integrated reservoir characterization; nanoparticle engineering for subsurface processes; gas engineering; production engineering; and reservoir engineering. The biggest research program at the center involves EOR, chemical reservoir flooding, carbon dioxide injection for EOR, and carbon dioxide sequestration. Of the centers USD 15 million in funding, about USD 5 million involves EOR research, the cutting edge of which is mobility control using surfactant, that is, dissolving new surfactants in the carbon dioxide itself. The centers industrial associates projects are chemical EOR, formation evaluation, natural gas EOR, geological carbon dioxide storage, hydraulic fracturing and sand control, and the reservoir simulation joint industry project (Fig. 2). The center also does modeling of carbon dioxide storage and collaborates with the universitys Bureau of Economic Geology and chemical engineering department, and the Institute for Computational and Applied Sciences for carbon dioxide sequestration research. The center received a US Department of Energy grant for basic scientific research on the long-term effects of storing geological carbon dioxide underground. Its project partner is the Sandia National Laboratories. About 40 companies are involved in the centers research, which covers both unconventional and conventional resources, though there has been recent heightened emphasis on unconventional resources such as shale gas and coalbed methane. McDougall School of Petroleum Engineering, University of Tulsa, US Research at the University of Tulsas McDougall School of Petroleum Engineering features several specialized research teams that are studying artificial lift, reservoir studies, fluid flow, drilling, high viscosity oil, paraffin deposition, reservoir exploitation, and separation technology. Tulsa research partners are Baker Hughes, BP Chevron, ConocoPhillips, , ExxonMobil, GE, Kuwait Oil, Petrobras, Marathon Oil, Schlumberger, Shell, Total, Devon, Eni, Pemex, Saipem, Saudi Aramco, Nalco, BG Group, BHP Billiton, Rosneft, and Wood Group, among others. The artificial lift projects provide an experimental artificial lift facility with theoretical academic support. The center of research excellence is a partnership between the university and Chevron, currently working on dispersion, foam breakup, fluid shear, multiphase flow splitting, heavy oil maximization, and shale stabilization. Fluid flow projects research involves pipe diameter and drift velocity, a high-

Fig. 2The University of Texas Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineerings Reservoir Simulation Joint Industry Project has developed and implemented an element-based finite volume (EbFV) method for unstructured grids using mixed elements. Initial results of the EbFV method show that the new implementation can better capture the reservoir geometry compared with the finite difference discretization method.

pressure/large diameter multiphase flow loop, slug length and high-viscosity flow, liquid entrainment, and low liquid loading three-phase flow. The drilling research projects investigate deep sea drilling operations. The highviscosity oil project research involves facility improvements, multiphase flow, high-viscosity oil/water/emulsion rheology, and unified modeling of high-viscosity oil multiphase pipe flow. The paraffin deposition project is conducting studies on turbulent flow, multiphase flow deposition, field verification and upscaling, gelled restart, and software. Petroleum reservoir exploitation projects research involves research on gradient-based history matching, covariance localization, Kalman filter and Markov chain applications, and various other mathematical optimizations. The separation technology projects work to advance the compact multiphase cyclonic separating technology for gas, JPT oil, water, and sand flow. More detailed articles on specific research groups at various universities worldwide are featured at www.jptonline.org.

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