From Bureau of Economic Geology, The
University of Texas at Austin (www.beg.utexas.edu).
For more information, please contact the author.
Bureau Seminar, September 25, 2009
Micro and Nano Scale Sensors for Oil Exploration & Production
Sean Murphy, Advanced Energy Consortium
Bureau of Economic Geology
Oil and gas recovery has depended for years on the mega or giga scale injection of inexpensive fluids (primarily water and brines) to increase the production from oil reservoirs. Even using enhanced recovery techniques, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reported in 2006 that about 67 percent of all U.S. oil remains in place. With the depletion of conventional hydrocarbon resources and the need to explore and recover from unconventional sources, the oil industry now must understand how and where much of the remaining hydrocarbons are trapped – at the nano scale. Industry heavyweights BP America, Baker Hughes, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton Energy Services, Marathon Oil, Occidental Oil and Gas, Petrobras, Schlumberger, Shell and Total are initiating nano scale research directed at oil field applications through the Bureau of Economic Geology's Advanced Energy Consortium. This talk will provide an overview of the consortium's scope, research and future plans.
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