Global Petroleum Show cranks up, amid optimism about R&D
CALGARY, Alberta -- Canada’s largest oil and gas event, the Global Petroleum Show, hosted its first day of exhibitions and presentations on Tuesday, as attendees exuded quite optimism that perhaps the great industry downturn has bottomed out. While show officials and attendees continue to be concerned about the ongoing effects of the 19-month downturn, they exude growing confidence that E&P activity may be about to pick up, and feel more optimistic about the industry’s future.
One of the reasons that attendees feel more optimistic is that they believe technology and R&D are going to make the industry more efficient and competitive. And there are plenty of innovations—some big, some small—at the Stampede Park showgrounds to justify that confidence. And two initiatives founded and being shepherded by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) are part of the mix.
Perhaps the faster-moving project is to establish the Centre for the Demonstration of Emissions Reductions (C-DER), which will be a Saskatchewan-based test and verification facility. This SRC project will provide real-world testing, demonstration and verification of emissions-reduction technologies. It is designed to accelerate industry adoption of practical, economic technologies while offering independent, industry-recognized third-party certification.
“There is a real need for this, because government energy regulators are demanding substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions from industry in the next five to ten years,” said Mike Crabtree, V.P. for Energy at SRC. “While carbon dioxide is a major concern, there is an increased need to focus on and address the large emissions from oil and gas. The industry is looking for effective, scalable new technologies that can reduce their emissions in line with emerging regulations.” He noted that GHG technology developers need lower costs and an accelerated route to validate and commercialize their emission reduction technologies.
C-DER will address the needs through a fee-for-service and low-cost platform for field-scale testing of emissions reduction and capture technologies. C-DER will focus on methane emission reductions, but it also will deal with carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, mono-nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides. The fixed-unit facility to carry out these functions will be ready for operation in first-quarter 2017. “And the mobile unit version is expected to go active in third-quarter or fourth-quarter 2017,” added Crabtree. The mobile unit will be able to connect to sources, such as wells, tanks or production batteries, and will work with equipment attached to operating wells.
SRC also is working to establish what it calls a Post-CHOPS (cold, heavy oil production with sand) Well Test Centre, which will be a fee-for-service facility managed by SRC. It will provide field and pilot-scale testing, monitoring and validation of new Post-CHOPS technologies that use end-of-life, but still active, CHOPS wells. The center will be a commercialization route for technology providers, as it reduces cost, risk and time from technology development to market.
Most of the heavy oil in Saskatchewan is produced using the CHOPS technique. So, thousands of these wells are coming to the end of their useful lives, having produced only 7% to 10% of the original oil in place. This leaves hundreds of millions of barrels of heavy oil in the ground. The CHOPS production process relies on developing long, thin production channels in reservoirs, known as wormholes. A mature CHOPS well may have many wormholes extending away from the well, creating a complex structure. Unfortunately, wormholes bypass the majority of oil around the producing well, making production of the remaining oil difficult. So, the new center will develop and commercialize Post-CHOPS technologies that can use existing wells to produce more of the remaining oil left in the reserves. There is an estimate that the amount of oil being bypassed by CHOPS wells may total 23-to-24-Bbbl.
