Seven R&D Projects Selected to Develop Advanced Diagnostics and Imaging Technologies

Selections are First in Five Major Petroleum Research Competitions Being Conducted by Energy Department

The U.S. Department of Energy today selected seven research projects that, if successful, could give petroleum engineers a new, more advanced array of diagnostic and imaging tools capable of producing a "portrait" of an underground reservoir in unprecedented detail.

The winning proposers - six are universities, the seventh is a research institute - will share in $6 million in federal petroleum research funds, while providing $2 million in cost-sharing.

Working over the next three years at both the microscopic scale and in actual oil reservoirs, the researchers will develop new surface and underground surveying methods that will improve the precision of today's technology. They will develop advanced geoscientific instruments, ranging from nuclear magnetic resonance to laser imaging, that will produce high-resolution data on the geometry of a reservoir and the characteristics of the way fluids flow through the reservoir rock. Some of the winning research teams will also work on advanced computer software that can generate more accurate and reliable geologic models and simulations of oil reservoirs and recovery processes.

The selections are the first in five major petroleum-related research competitions being sponsored by DOE's National Petroleum Technology Office in Tulsa, OK. Announced last March, the national competitions are intended to provide the core of DOE's cooperative research program with the nation's oil producers in the coming years.

The winning projects in the "Advanced Diagnostics and Imaging" category are:

• Rice University will use nuclear magnetic resonance well logging technology to analyze how fluids interact with reservoir rock surfaces to design new oil recovery processes.

• Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M will use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and imaging technology to analyze critical reservoir rock properties to simulate fluid flow for more efficient oil recovery process designs. NMR is of great interest to engineers and geologists because it is the only logging tool that estimates permeability, a measure of the relative ease of fluid flow from the formation into the wellbore.

• Southwest Research Institute will study improved methods to predict fluid characteristics and flow patterns to more accurately model reservoirs.

• New Mexico Tech's Petroleum Recovery Research Center will research a fluid's spreading across, or attraction to, a solid surface and how oil flowing through a reservoir is affected by other fluids and by a variety of rock and mineral surfaces.

• The University of Texas at Austin will study how the interactions of oil and other fluids with rock mineral surfaces and injected fluids affect oil flow through the reservoir and will provide ways to use the collected information for better reservoir fluid flow models.

• University of Houston will develop improved laboratory centrifuge testing methods to determine how efficiently oil drains through a reservoir and model the resulting laboratory data.

• Purdue Research Foundation will use advanced laser imaging, micro-modeling technology and rock core analyses to gather detailed measurements on the interactions of oil with other fluids and with rock mineral surfaces and injected fluids that affect the oil flow through a reservoir.

The selections reflect the Energy Department's and the domestic petroleum industry's increased emphasis on diagnostics and imaging technology, especially in the last 10 years. As U.S. oil reservoirs have become more difficult to produce - an increasing percentage of domestic oil production today is coming from smaller, more compartmentalized and deep reservoirs - the need for more accurate imaging and modeling technologies has become more acute.

Already, the petroleum industry spends over $3 billion a year on seismic acquisition, processing and interpretation. But with oil prices expected to remain low, the need for more accurate imaging and diagnostic technologies will become especially important in reducing the risk of dry holes and other production uncertainties.

The new techniques to be developed by the seven winning proposers are expected to offer particular benefits in reducing risks and aiding the survival of many smaller, independent oil producers. These companies, who are rapidly becoming the dominant producers of oil in the United States, cannot afford to carry out this type of high-risk development by themselves.

The seven new projects announced today can be grouped into four major categories:

Pore-Scale Imaging

Imaging reservoir rocks and fluids and their interactions at the rock pore scale using X-ray computing tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imagery and other techniques to assist in determining how these properties affect oil recovery. NMR logging, although not a new technology, has only recently been refined for accurate measurements in wellbores. Laboratory studies are necessary to increase the understanding of how NMR measurements relate to pore size and shape and the chemistry of the reservoir fluids, oil, gas, and brine. These studies will refine the precision of the wellbore measurements.

• Rice University, Houston, TX
  Lead Researcher: Dr. George J. Hirasaki, (713) 285-5416

  Project: "Fluid-Rock Characterization and Interactions in NMR Well Logging") DOE will provide Rice University with $637,000 to use nuclear magnetic resonance well logging technology to improve the evaluation of reservoir characteristics. The Rice researchers will analyze the interactions of formation fluids with reservoir rock surfaces, noting the resistance to flow, API gravity rating, and the fluid properties of oil, water, brine, methane, and hydrogen. Increasing producers' ability to estimate formation properties, such as pore space, water volume, and other reservoir flow characteristics will result in more efficient oil recovery processes. Rice University will provide an additional $270,000.

• Texas Engineering Experiment Station, at Texas A&M, College Station, TX
  Lead Researcher: Dr. A. T. Watson (409) 845-3484

  Project: "NMR Characterizations of Heterogeneous Porous Media")DOE will provide the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) with $809,000 to determine reservoir properties that are critical to effective models of fluid flowing through a reservoir, a vital tool for designing optimal oil recovery processes in reservoirs with a variety of different rock types. TEES researchers will conduct advanced core analysis using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging to determine the amount of pore space in the reservoir rock, the ability of fluids to flow through the reservoir rock pores - their permeability, a measure of pore connectivity - and estimates of changes in relative permeability and reservoir fluid pressure. This information will be used to develop improved methods to predict permeability areas in reservoirs and to evaluate a novel method for testing permeability from core properties observable on NMR well-logs. TEES will provide $202,000.

• Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX
  Lead Researcher: Dr. Jorge O. Parra, (201) 522-3284

  Project: "A Methodology to Integrate MR and Acoustic Measurements for Reservoir Characterization") DOE will provide the Southwest Research Institute with $829,000 for research to improve reservoir fluid analysis. Teaming with operational personnel in California oil fields, the Institute researchers will use magnetic resonance and acoustic technology to obtain data on reservoir rock properties at minute scales. By relating the microscopic rock pore structure to observed larger-scale fluid flow characteristics in the well cores, fluid flow units can be defined for use in reservoir models. Improved prediction methods on reservoir fluid flow characteristics will enhance the accuracy of the computer simulations used to develop more efficient oil recovery processes. The Institute will provide $207,000.

Wettability and Imbibition - Research on how the tendency of fluids to adhere to or be absorbed on mineral surfaces affects fluid flow rate through reservoir rock.

• New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Petroleum Recovery Research Center, Socorro, NM
  Lead Researcher: Dr. Jill S. Buckley, (505) 835-5405

  Project: "Microscopic Distribution of Wetting and Its Consequences at the Core and Field Scales") DOE will provide New Mexico Tech's Petroleum Recovery Research Center (PRRC) with $1.1 million to gather improved data on how the flow of oil through a reservoir is affected by the interaction of the oil and formation fluids with rock mineral surfaces, and by other injected fluids. To determine what causes fluids to attach to rock, PRRC researchers will identify the chemical makeup of oil samples from major domestic reservoirs, and will use new diagnostic tools to assess the separation of components in oil/solvent mixtures. Researchers will analyze a variety of reservoir rocks to determine the rates at which fluids absorb on the surfaces under various reservoir temperatures and pressures. The increased knowledge of these factors controlling reservoir fluid flow will allow producers to improve reservoir computer simulation and the design of oil recovery processes. New Mexico Tech will provide $675,000.

• The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
  Lead Researcher: Dr. Mukul M. Sharma, (512) 471-3257

  Project: "Characterization of Mixed Wettability at Different Scales and Its Impact on Oil Recovery Efficiency") DOE will provide the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) with $1.0 million to gather improved pore-scale data on fluid/rock surface interactions that affect the flow of oil, and to develop methods to relate this information to fluid flow processes at larger scales. UTA researchers will sample oil from U.S. reservoirs to test for stable fluid films on various mineral surfaces and the interactions of oil and brine. Their goal is to improve producers' understanding of the size and shape of the rock pores and the makeup of fluids. Models relating these reservoir fluid properties at various scales will be incorporated in UTA's reservoir simulator to investigate how fluids that tend to adhere to rock surfaces affect fluid movement in the reservoir and recovery efficiency at the reservoir scale. UTA will provide $229,000.

In-Situ Relative Permeability - Research directed toward the physical and chemical processes that affect the rates at which oil, brine and gas will move through reservoir rock pores under various reservoir conditions.

• University of Houston, Houston, TX
  Lead Researcher: Dr. Kishore K. Mohanty, (713) 743-4331

  Project: "Impact of Capillary and Bond Numbers on Relative Permeability") DOE will provide the University of Houston with $472,000 to develop improved laboratory centrifuge testing methods to determine how waterflooding affects the rates for oil, gas and condensates to flow through a reservoir, a crucial factor in oil recovery. Current centrifuge methods can be used to determine these relative capabilities, but not at typical reservoir pressures. The researchers will add high-pressure and saturation measuring capabilities to their centrifuge testing methods, experimentally determine the effect of the reservoir's microscopic geometry and pressure, and develop a pore-scale network model that will scale the laboratory results to oil field operation scale for use in improving recovery processes. The University of Houston will provide $120,000.

Upscaling - Research on relating reservoir processes at the rock-pore scale to the same processes in the reservoir as a whole, and applying those relationships to improving oil recovery.

• Purdue Research Foundation, West Lafayette, IN
  Lead Researcher: Dr. Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte, (765) 495-3027

  Project: "Experimental Investigation of Relative Permeability Upscaling from the Micro-Scale to the Macro-Scale") DOE will provide the Purdue Research Foundation with $1.0 million to develop improved methods of relating observations and measurements of reservoir fluid flow at the micron-sized rock pore scale to the centimeter-sized scale of rock core properties. The researchers will compare the relative saturation and flow characteristics of reservoir fluids in rock pores to measurements of the pore surface area. This information, obtained from three-dimensional holographic laser images, will allow researchers to conduct controlled experiments measuring fluid drainage, absorption, pressure and saturation. Comparison of these results with fluid flow and saturation characteristics measured at the core scale will determine which microscopic measurements are most useful for predicting flow properties for the reservoir as a whole. Enhanced predictive capabilities from microscopic information will improve reservoir simulation used to design more efficient oil recovery processes. Purdue University will provide cost-share funding of $257,000.

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For more information, contact:
Hattie Wolfe, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy Headquarters, (202)586-6503; e-mail address: hattie.wolfe@hq.doe.gov

Technical Contact:
Herb Tiedemann, Technology Transfer Officer, National Petroleum Technology Office, (918) 699-2017; e-mail address: htiedema@npto.doe.gov
(Original public abstracts are available upon request.)