May 11, 2015
Mohammad Piri, UW’s Wyoming Excellence Chair in Petroleum Engineering and head of
the Hess Digital Rock Physics Laboratory, left, shakes hands with Rustom Mody, vice
president of technology for Baker Hughes Inc., following Monday’s announcement of
a $1 million grant from the company to support research into the behavior of multi-phase
fluids in oil and gas reservoirs. (UW Photo)
The University of Wyoming and Baker Hughes Inc., a global oil field services company,
today (Monday) announced a $1 million grant to support research that will help ensure
the future of Wyoming’s economy.
Baker Hughes Inc. has previously supported oil and gas research and the petroleum
engineering program at UW. A recent gift went to the High Bay Research Facility, a
state-of-the-art facility with flexible laboratory space that is under construction.
A past gift, of an X-ray defractometer and funding, supported student drilling fluids
laboratories.
The latest grant supports research into the behavior of multi-phase fluids in oil
and gas reservoirs at UW’s Hess Digital Rock Physics Laboratory -- “the world’s most
innovative for advanced reservoir characterization,” says School of Energy Resources
Director Mark Northam.
“Research concerning the flow of oil and gas through tight rocks is booming,” Northam
says. “Grants from industry such as the one we announced today with Baker Hughes are
critical for UW to ensure relevance of the work and to maintain our world-leading
status in the area.”
This UW lab holds the most advanced high-resolution 3-D X-ray microscope available.
UW is the first university in the world to put this tool in the hands of faculty and
researchers who apply it to the understanding of underground oil and gas reservoirs
-- where extremely complicated displacement physics are encountered.
This custom-designed equipment enables UW researchers to obtain ultra-high-resolution,
nano-scale images of porous media. Once scanned, these nano-scale 3-D maps of pore
space can be used to more accurately characterize and model flow and fluid occupancy
in reservoir rocks relevant to subsurface reservoirs, which can contain oil and natural
gas.
The experimental research and complex data generated in this laboratory can be viewed
and analyzed in UW’s Shell 3-D Visualization Laboratory using the computational capabilities
of UW’s Advanced Research Computing Center and the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center.
This laboratory is the central research laboratory for the Piri Research Group and
the Center for Fundamentals of Subsurface Flow, a School of Energy Resources Center
of Excellence.
“This partnership plays an important role in developing a fundamental understanding
of flow and transport in tight porous material, with applications in oil and gas recovery
from unconventional reservoirs,” says Mohammad Piri, Wyoming Excellence Chair in Petroleum
Engineering and head of the Hess Digital Rock Physics Laboratory. “We at the University
of Wyoming really appreciate Baker Hughes’s interest in collaborating with the University
of Wyoming on this strategically important area of research.”
Piri’s research has resulted in significant collaborations with private industry,
which provide a better understanding of characteristics of oil and gas reservoirs
and how to effectively improve recovery using existing recovery processes and technology.
Piri received his Ph.D. in petroleum engineering at England’s Imperial College London
and pursued post-doctoral studies at Princeton University.
Piri also co-directs the Center for the Fundamentals of Subsurface Flow, a multidisciplinary
team of UW faculty members that conducts broad research leading to computer simulation
of fluid flow in porous media.
Wyoming is the third-largest national producer of natural gas and eighth-largest of
crude oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. However, to maintain its edge
in the industry, Wyoming needs to research enhanced recovery techniques that recover
a higher percentage of stranded hydrocarbons within the state’s mature or older fields.
Fifty to 70 percent of the original oil in these older fields remains stranded, and
enhanced oil recovery methods are needed to retrieve more oil -- a possible 5-15 percent
-- to extend the commercial life of those fields up to 30 years.
Today’s event took place in the Encana Auditorium at the Energy Innovation Center,
and speakers included former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Baker Hughes Vice President of
Technology Rustom Mody, UW President Dick McGinity, Northam and UW Foundation President
Ben Blalock.
Baker Hughes is a top-tier oil field services company with a century-long track record
that delivers solutions to help oil and gas operators make the most of their reservoirs.
The company was formed in 1987 from the merger of Baker International and Hughes Tool
Company -- both founded more than 100 years ago. It has more than 53,000 employees
in more than 80 countries.
Baker Hughes retired Executive Chairman Chad Deaton is a member of the UW Foundation
Board and co-chaired the Wyoming Governor’s Energy, Engineering, STEM Integration
Task Force.
