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Today, oil explorers image reservoirs of oil using seismic waves, generated by explosions or big vibrator machines. Thousands of sensors distributed around a oil field detect reflected waves, and from this information computers generate a three-dimensional image. They use low frequencies that penetrate miles into the earth, but the tradeoff for distance is low resolution.
One way to improve imaging is with better algorithms for sorting signal from noise in sensor measurements, something computer scientists at MIT are working on. For example, as seismic waves encounter geological formations, they can change form to a type of wave, called a sheer wave, that can produce more detailed information about a reservoir, if information about these waves can be sorted out from other incoming signals.
Also, less expensive drilling technology may make it feasible to use more sensors or vibration sources underground, closer to the oil, which makes it possible to use higher frequencies. Additional holes could also be used for pressure and chemical sensors. Jefferson Tester, professor of chemical engineering at MIT, has demonstrated a drilling technique that replaces mechanical drill bits with a flame for breaking apart the rock with heat. The technique can be more energy efficient and faster than mechanical drilling, and perhaps more importantly does not require that a drill bit be periodically raised to the surface and replaced -- a major reason why drilling costs now rise exponentially with the depth of a well, Tester says. While his technology is not yet ready for full-scale deployment, in addition to allowing placement of more sensors, it could potentially allow energy oil companies to drill holes much deeper for economically recovering oil.
Future innovative technologies could include new methods for breaking the adhesion forces that trap oil inside tiny pores in rock. These include technologies for focusing acoustic and electromechanical energy to disrupt the surface forces between oil and rock; new chemicals and even microbes could also help. The microbes would work in part by digesting the long hydrocarbons of thick oil into shorter, lighter ones that flow more readily.
If the new technologies prove out, the results could be dramatic. "In the U.S., there could be as much as 40 billion barrels that could be produced, and global the figures are much, much more," Toksöz says. The 40 billion barrels is about four times the amount thought to be recoverable from the controversial plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Guest (Eric Mankin)
At the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, an effort to increase productivity of oil resources has been systematically going on for years.
The School offers a masters degree, the only one of its kind, in smart oilfields technology. Through the School's Distance Education Network (DEN) the course can be (and is) being taken by working engineers in the field. The first MS will be awarded next week to an engineer who did his course work from his job at the Elk Hills oilfield outside Bakersfield, California. See:
http://den.usc.edu/programs/mspte/index.htm#progdesc
Also, the School is the home of the Center for Interactive Smart Oil Technologies (CiSoft), funded by Chevron and other industry sources: see:
http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2005/2005_02_02_cvxusc.htm
This is an effort that has been going on for years, and is now paying off at the wellhead in new technologies.
Guest (Emanuel Bocancea)
Microwaves should be considered for the drilling head to help thin the oil. Anyone looking into this out there?
Guest (TERRY FROST)
Ivanho's heavy to light process
This will change the way oil is mined in the future. We already know where billions of barrels of oil is and IVAN now has a preocess to make it light oil with no nat gas used and no light oil to add to make it flow.
http://www.ivanhoe-energy.com/s/Home.asp
Guest (Arturo Gelerstein)
so what is the new extraction technology
what i am reading here is better imaging tech, new drilling tech. Besides mentioning microbes in the first paragraph, I´m wondering if a better drill and a better image can really do a better job when handling the "basic physics" problem of extracting the oil from "very small places between the grains of sand", and increase the world oil supply in 50%.
Guest (vidya)
i am also inclined towards your views...
sir, i am vidya sagar, b.tech applied petroleum engineering, from UNIVERSITY of PETROLEUM & ENERGY STUDIES,INDIA...
i am interested in working on some of the upcoming techs.. so if you could mail me some of the emerging technologies i would be obliged .. vidyasagar_bammidi@rediffmail.com
Guest (Larry Stiers)
A radical solution is already here !
A multidisciplinary research effort resulted in the discovery that up to 95% of the remaining oil can be recovered with unusually high profit margins, thus doubling world oil supplies.In three years the first extraction plant is expected to start operations.
http://www.nexialinstitute.org explains more.
Microwaves can be useful for small fields, and many other emerging oil technologies will add 10%-30% to supply over the next 20 years,but none offer the BIG solution that The Nexial Institute found.
Guest (D Bly)
I'm having trouble continuing to be excited about getting oil out of the ground at all. Sonoluminescence, if we do the math, sure looks like fusion from real low energy input, and thermal depolymerization is going to become substantially cheaper than other oil production technologies...if we are just going to continue letting industry insist on controlling where power comes from. And we haven't even started talking about nanotech impacts on getting energy from one state to another. There is more to Big Oil than just international politics.
Guest (Larry Stiers)
The Nexial Scientific Company here in Germany has looked into this and other oil/ Energy related technologies and agrees that we shouldn't depend on just one source or technology. Thermal depolymerization is indeed highly promising, and the price per barrel thus produced is already below $80.00.
The main emphasis of www.nexialinstitute.org is however currently petroleum only because that's where our research led to a breakthrough. Producing new oil from old fields for less than $20.00 per barrel,( starting in three years )will remove some of the price pressure and politics and give alternatives time to be optimized and brought online. There is good reason to be optimistic.
Guest (ERICH j. kNIGHT)
Laser Drilling of the future
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex40407.htm
Guest (zac)
So, maybe the oil companies will employ these methods when oil is $150 a barrel. I would worry more about mitigating peak oil and curbing emissions than flogging an nearly dead horse.
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Guest (Giuseppe Lanzavecchia)
Quantity of resources
I have always thought that resorces are illimited because they are invented by man and because their use drives the development of new techniques. In partcular for oil data indicate that its use has increased if not its tonnage certainly its capability to produce more electricity, Mileage of cars, etc. I have written about this argument , with Umberto Colombo, a lon article in "Grande dizionario enciclopedico. Scenari del XXI secolo, UTET, Torino 2005, Capitolo “Risorse e popolazione”, pp 4-29
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