How can innovation and technology help make the most of existing energy resources?

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The world's demand for energy continues to grow due to population growth and improving standards of living.  At the same time, the days of "easy oil and gas" are over. To complement the drive to extract new resources in increasingly challenging environments it is also important to ensure that existing reservoirs yield their full potential. Why are Shell's enhanced oil recovery techniques a viable solution?

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The days of “easy oil and gas” are over. New technologies are required to meet the world’s growing demand for energy.

The International Energy Agency recognises that fossil fuels must continue to meet the bulk of demand for many years to come. To date, the focus has been to discover new resources from increasingly challenging reservoirs and locations. Existing reservoirs typically yield only 30-35% of their potential and at Shell we have developed enhanced oil recovery techniques to extract up to 20% additional yield from light oilfields and 80% for heavy oil. This offers huge potential for our energy future.

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Closed October 13th
Mayowa
Wednesday, 28th September 2011 18.40
Very easy.Innovation and technology can help make the most of existing energy resources by celebrating the "development projects and programmes" of innovation and technology helping make most existing energy resources. There are development projects and programmes of innovations and technology "helping in making most of existing energy resources". I mean development news concerning this project. Helping making most of existing energy resources of innovation and technology itself is a project on its own. For this project, there are development to be celebrated. When this "development", most of which we got after long time of research,offering,volunteering, and hard-work are celebrated, then we could be sure of appreciating even the success of Innovation and technology helping make most of existing energy resources.
Rob Handfield
Wednesday, 28th September 2011 18.49
Until Shell understands the process for integrating and identifying shared technologies, IP, and processes to uncover these new pools through relational contracting, it will be difficult to proceed through operator change alone. Innovation is now about exploiting capabilities in the network, and creating platforms for joint value creation and knowledge building. Many of the contractual structures in existence today is a "winner take all" approach, with very little incentive for true network collaboration and change. Shell is not alone - other oil and gas companies also have poor supply market intelligence capabilities, and are risk averse when it comes to shared risks and rewards with core technology partners in the network.
FOG
Thursday, 29th September 2011 03.50
Hi Rob, I think your post is particularly relevant. Shell and other majors understand production, markets and reserve replenishment very well. Innovation is something different, and requires different understanding. Regardless of the industry innovative change and rapid growth associated with that change traditionally come from outside the current established industry majors. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Fortescue Metals are some examples. To survive start-up these outside innovators have to hold technology exclusivity - hence I.P is required. Open networking uncovers these innovators for the industry majors. Winner take all arrangements transfer ownership into hands of a larger industry player who could not identify the solutions with own resources previously - and so are likely not well positioned to advance that technology as well as the originators. Scalability is also restricted by one winner takes all approach to innovation. This alone increases risk
Raja
Wednesday, 28th September 2011 21.47
It is very important at this point to realise that we cannot have a heterogeneous law guiding the oil and gas exploration across the world.With the WTO format in full existence,this is the time when we should have a uniform consencous towards a Universal Global policy and law. The same global policy should re-structure oil prices and take control out of OPEC Countries and have a larger global community decide on the production geography,pattern,resource management and most important aspect -price. This we should have a re-structured legally viable platform where USA is forced to explore in in its mainland and Alaska..Governments across the developed and developing nations are forced to adopt atleast 11-17% of their total energy consumption from Renewable Resources [ Solar being abundant,with combination of Wind,Thermal,Biomass,Hydro etc]. This should be in form a legislation which may be termed as "Compulsory Renewable Energy Purchase Obligation [CREPO].
engr_358
Wednesday, 28th September 2011 22.07
1) How about researching the use of nanotechnology along with waterflooding so that nanobots or nano-organisms can alter the wettability of the reservoir rock thereby reducing the pore pressures and releasing more interstitial oil trapped in the smaller rock pores. 2) In a similar vein, introduce nanobots or nano-organisms that may act as "platelets" (analogous to blood) to block off larger pores in the reservoir rock thereby forcing more waterflood water through smaller pores and increasing sweep efficiency. 3) Combine the above for a double nano punch!!!
Darren
Thursday, 29th September 2011 00.49
Access to these unused reserves with improved technology will be critical going forward, and Shell should be commended as it adds value to us all (as a global community). Notwithstanding this the technology must be tested to ensure safe operations for people and the environment. The global community will not stand for any more operational disasters, similar to what occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. From a cost perspective these technologies cannot add additional costs pressures to the downstream marketed product. Particularly in developed countries the public demand for alternative sources of power generation and transport fuels has climaxed, with suppliers (of these sources) looking for ways to capitalize their projects. Adding costs to downstream marketed transport and power generation fuels may make advanced extraction technologies worthless.
Shell
Friday, 30th September 2011 16.29
Hi Darren, indeed safety of our operations is the top priority and we are committed to further improved the safety performance of our operations. Though the applying EOR techniques might increase the complexity of operations compared to primary by no means we will compromise safety. EOR technologies can be indeed viable options to extend the lifetime of existing fields but it is depending on the specific settings of each reservoir. EOR can be very cost competitive when compared to other non-conventional extraction methods. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the production cost for EOR is between US$25 and US$80 a barrel. The extra barrels produced by EOR techniques compete with the oil produced elsewhere hence the oil price on the global markets will determine whether an EOR operation will be viable or not. Also, not applying advanced techniques to improve recovery from oil and gas fields and increase the oil production would result in shortages because of the increasing global demand and consequently bares the risk of increasing energy prices.
shezi_pathan
Thursday, 29th September 2011 06.21
Well since couple of years i have been tied with Oil & Gas industry. Many up's and down has been seen, not only in this sector but in overall. As the demands goes up, the search for new technology arrives to full fill it. Many people have there own though & observation,that how the new techno will be help full. For example in offshore drilling there many various kind of techno used to get on target. But it should not be distractive for environment & humans.
tvsandeep123
Thursday, 29th September 2011 06.24
EOR is not a permanent solution for huge energy requirements at present and in future. Developments on utilization of non-conventional energy (wind, solar ...) is very important as the oil reserves are going down.
Shell
Saturday, 1st October 2011 12.39
Hi tvsandeep – great point. Global energy demand continues to rise due to improving living standards and population growth. At the same time, the world’s remaining supplies of oil and gas are in harder-to-reach places, such as in deep waters, or lodged in rocks from which they cannot be easily freed. Environmental and social challenges demand a responsible approach to producing energy while encouraging a gradual shift toward cleaner fossil fuels and alternative energy. Renewable Energies will play an increasing role in the future global energy supply but hydrocarbons will continue to provide the major share of energy of the coming decades. In this context EOR plays a crucial role as these techniques could help to significantly increase the oil recovery from existing fields. Just 1 % increase in average oil recovery equals 88 billion barrels of oil!