New developments in technology are making bypassed
oil a resource that could potentially increase the United State's
crude oil reserves by 10 times the amount.
This oil, vast amounts of which are sitting around in old
or abandoned wells, is located in areas that are difficult
to access, and therefore difficult to retrieve. Predicting
the location and size of these rather elusive oil deposits
is costly because it requires complex computing capabilities;
and many independent producers aren't able to commit to the
time and cost required to find these "overlooked" stores
of oil.
Yet technological advancement is changing this.
As reported earlier this year by the U.S. National Energy
Technology Laboratory (NETL), researchers at Texas (A&M)
university and the Department of Energy have produced a new
computer tool that can potentially recover as many as 218
billion barrels of bypassed oil remaining in mature domestic
fields. This volume approaches the proven reserves of Saudi
Arabia, and, as stated in Canadian newspaper, The Globe and
Mail, is almost 10 times the amount of proven reserves in
the US, (currently 22 billion barrels) - "enough to
run the US economy for the next 25 years."
The same report in the Globe and Mail stated that if more
than 200 barrels of oil could be recovered per day, then
the US would gain more oil than it imports from Canada.
By identifying the so-called "unswept" regions
in mature fields containing high oil or gas saturation, the
new computer model developed by A&M will save time and
money in predicting the location of by-passed oil and in
planning its recovery.
In this process, geoscientists first employ computer models
to develop an accurate picture, or characterization, of a
productive oil reservoir. They then correlate the predictions
of oil and gas production to a reservoir's actual production
history. This ultimately helps engineers calculate how much
oil remains in the reservoir, and how to determine the most
efficient methods to retrieve it.
A&M's partner, the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory
(NETL), operates six research campuses across the world.
It funds research into oil recovery because it believes in
its potential as a vast resource. "More than two thirds
of all the oil ever discovered in America," the NETL
says, "remains in the ground."
Funding research for oil recovery methods is of little interest
to the big oil companies, however, so NETL develops technology
to help small, independent companies pursue salvaging this "abandoned" oil.
Since independent oil and gas producers operate the majority
of wells in the United States, this segment of the oil and
gas industry plays a major role in the recovery of the nation’s
domestic oil and gas resources. More than 7000 of these companies
are already recovering oil from these resources.
Through its "Technology Development with Independents" program,
small, independent oil producers are assisted in testing
higher-risk technologies that could keep oil flowing from
thousands of U.S. fields. As stated by the NETL, "sharing
the risks and expenses has resulted in innovative methods
and technologies which have boosted oil production and prevented
the premature shut down of some of the nation's most endangered
oil fields."
A technology developed with U.S. Department of Energy funding,
for example, has jumped production from zero to more than
100 barrels of oil per day in two Osage County, Okla., oil
fields - one of which is more than 100 years old.
Grand Resources Inc., a small, independent oil producer
based in Tulsa, Okla., has successfully done this through
its innovations of a method called waterflooding, which is
the most common form of oil recovery.
Waterflooding involves injecting water into an oil reservoir
declining in production to help push the residual oil to
wells that are still producing.
By the end of its third year in 2005, this pilot project
yielded more than 6,000 barrels of oil, and the test wells
are expected to ultimately produce almost 29,000 barrels.
As these numbers suggest, by-passed oil could revitalize
thousands of other seemingly depleted oilfields across the
United States. It can also fuel the economy for years to
come.
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