Now Innovating: Partnering with the Energy Industry to Develop and Adapt Technologies

Now Innovating: Partnering with the Energy Industry to Develop and Adapt Technologies

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Welcome to Now innovating, a Research-to-Impact series the University of Calgary. I'm your host, Julia MacGregor. This episode we speak with Dr. Christopher Clarkson, professor in the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science. Chris is the director of the Tight Oil Consortium (TOC), an industry and government sponsored group focused on multidisciplinary approaches to reservoir characterization and engineering.

His applied research explores ways to enhance the extraction efficiency of Canada's unconventional hydrocarbon resources and develop new technologies and methods for sustainable resource development. Hi Chris, welcome to Now Innovating. Thanks for having me. I'm really happy and thank you for letting us film in your lab today. We get some fancy core samples - Some rocks! Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to learn more. Like, I have provided, like, a very general summary of your research.

And like, I know you've recently received lots of accolades for the work that you're doing at the Tight Oil Consortium, including the NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation. So congratulations. - Thank you so much. - That's a really huge honor and amazing. So I would just love if you could just tell us a bit more about the research that you do do with the TOC. - Sure. Love to do that. What research researcher doesn’t want to talk about their research? - Exactly. Yeah. So maybe a little background first.

When I came to the university back in 2009, it was really, at the onset of what we call the shale gas boom that took off in the United States. And some of those technologies that were developed for the shale gas boom were now being adopted in Canada to help develop some of our, low permeability or what we call unconventional resources, oil and gas resources here in Western Canada in particular, and also technologies such as multi fractured horizontal wells or horizontal wells that are hydraulically fractured in multiple stages were being used. And, you know, to develop these resources. And that brought on a lot of, challenges in terms of, you know, interpreting data from the wells, you know, trying to characterize the reservoirs and things like that.

And so that led us to start thinking about, okay, what can we do in the research space to help that proceed here in Canada? And, that led us to the idea of starting Tight Oil Consortium. So tight oil is oil from low permeability reservoirs, essentially. And, you know, really the remit of that consortium is to develop, advanced field and laboratory based techniques to characterize and evaluate these low permeability resources. So, we've been focused on developing these technologies, essentially to help with the efficiency of the development of the resources and doing that in an environmentally sustainable way, starting with the fuel technologies. We developed, a new, well testing method called DfID, FBA.

DFIT-FBA stands for Diagnostic Fracture Injection Test Flowback Analysis. - Okay. - So yeah, that's a it's a mouthful. So basically it's a new, well, test method that's used to, get information about the reservoir. So, the reservoir pressure, the reservoir permeability or how easily the fluids flow through the reservoir, in-situ stress and things like that.

And, and, it's really, a complement to the existing well tested analogies that exist out there. And we think is a significant advancement. And we're seeing a lot of uptake in that technology. So that's that's one example we've been, continuing to develop a technique called Rate Transient Analysis.

In essence, what that is, is we take production data from multi fractured horizontal well, and we use the rates and the pressures and we use that information, to extract information about the reservoir. So again permeability fracture properties, fluid in place. And all of that information is used to help efficiently develop the reservoir. So that technique RTA has been around for for quite a while, very common reservoir engineering technique, but it had to be modified to apply to these unconventional reservoirs, some complexities that we see. Multiphase flow, unique reservoir properties, complex fractures, inner well communication, all this stuff that we have to worry about.

Now, we didn't have to worry about ten, 15 years ago. And then a specific area of RTA, is what we call Flowback Analysis. That's RTA applied to very early time production data, where, after you've hydraulically fractured the well, the the fluids coming back are mostly your hydraulic fracturing fluids. People never really analyzed that quantitatively until we started to apply RTA techniques to that, to characterize hydraulic fracture properties and use that or, subsequent design of hydraulic fracturing in a well.

So it's called Flowback Analysis, and it's something that we've we've helped pioneer in advance. And then, in the field based side again, another technology Post Fracture Pressure Decay, which is pressure data collected after a well’s been hydraulic fractured, we can analyze that pressure decay for properties of interest on the laboratory side. Probably the most significant innovation is, what we call RTAPK, Rate Transient Analysis, Porosity/Permeability, which is a core analysis technique that's really designed to try to reproduce conditions that we see in the field, how a well operates, etc. And we analyzed the data exactly the same way we're using RTA technique applied to the data, just like we do in the field.

And that's really one of the things that we've tried to focus on in our group is, is develop laboratory techniques that represent the real world. Yeah. So that's kind of a high level overview of the technologies that we developed, really just trying to increase the efficiency, development, lower the environmental impacts and you know, really make make these technologies work for the companies that are working with us, really cool work helping to, you know, support the oil and gas industry in that piece. So that's really neat and great examples.

Obviously, you know, a lab based off going to the real, real world and being used. So with the... I'm going to say the acronym wrong again, but the the the diagnostic fracture injection test flow back analysis.

How do you use it faster? Oh you got it. Yeah. Yeah you nailed it. And can you just tell us a bit more about that. And like really like how the impact that it is having in the industry.

And that's the technology that we started working on probably about five years ago. Basically what we do is we inject fluid into a reservoir and we create, a mini hydraulic fracture. And then, once we've created that, we shut the pump off, and we observe a pressure fall off over time, and we interpret that pressure fall off for properties of interest.

The primary issue with it really is, is the amount of time it takes to get the data. So that pressure fall off can take days, weeks, months. - Oh, really? Before you can analyze it quantitatively for reservoir properties. And so, an alternative to that which was suggested not by us, but by, basically a hydraulic fracture engineer back in the late 1970s was to flow back. So after you create your mini fracture, instead of shutting and waiting that for that pressure fall off to occur over a long period of time, you actually flow back. And what that does is it accelerates the fracture closure.

It accelerates your ability to observe minimum in-situ stress the problem with it, though, again, they all have challenges, was that you flow back and the fracture closes very quickly and you lose the connection between the well and the reservoir. So what my team, did was really we redesigned that flow back DFIT to get the reservoir information. So we we, suggested flowing back at a slower rate so the fractures closed more slowly. And that maintains that connectivity with the with the reservoir. And then, analyze the data, just like we do production data. The RTA technique, we apply that to the flow back data of the DFIT to get our reservoir information.

We're able to get all the same information as a conventional DFIT but instead of days, weeks or, or months, that takes a couple of hours. There's a real advantage there in terms of time. And that's really encouraged operators to do more of these tasks, which is advantageous to society because we really want to get more data. Right. So they're more likely to implement it in the field because it doesn't disrupt their operations.

And, and, and so that's been a real advantage. But beyond that, we've seen some really important innovations in terms of application. So give you some examples. Conventional DFIT is normally performed at the the end or toe of a long horizontal well at one point. With DFIT-FBA we can do it at multiple points along a well, during one day.

And that allows you to get information along the well because these wells can be, you know, several kilometers long. - Yeah. And the reservoir properties change a lot from one end to the other. So we're able to characterize the reservoir along the well, which helps with fracture design, optimizing development, etc.. So that's been one big, advantage.

And we've we've demonstrated it with one of our TOC partners. So that's one, one topic. And then a very important topic here for, for Western Canada is the idea of, trying to mitigate the effects of induced seismicity, earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing.

And so we've figured out a way to detect fault zones with DFIT-FBA. And we're creating just a mini fracture. So we're not going to induce seismicity with that. But we can detect where that fault zone is and, determine whether that's going to impact the subsequent operations.

In terms of induced seismicity. We've seen in the literature people taking our technology and applying it to enhanced geothermal systems. So it has applications well beyond, the hydrocarbon industry.

And in terms of the impact to address the second part of, of your question, you know, we've we've, our TOC partners and other industry have implemented over 300 of them. Now, we've worked with operators in Australia, to to test it out. There's several operators that have tried it in, in the US plays as well. And here in, in Canada, the regulators the BC Energy Regulator has already adopted it as a standard well test technique. And, and here in Alberta, the Alberta energy regulators is looking at adopting it as well.

So very, very, exciting in terms of how it's being used. Definitely. That's using a as well as what the Australia testing piece about two. That's really cool. So I think I guess I didn't really ask this earlier to like, I think such a thing that makes the Tight Oil Consortium like so unique is really the industry partnerships that you do use.

Like how does that actually function? Like how do does industry come to you? Like, you know, we see this challenge. Like how can you explain a bit more about that? So just before I get to the industry part, just the way that we're structured in TOC, really is an outcome of my experience in industry. So I was in industry for 11 years before I came here, and I had the privilege of working in several instances on, an asset team and, how an asset team functions.

It was a great experience in general, being able to work with these other, people that are that have a different discipline than you. But there's a, you know, obviously there's overlap and you can work together to solve a common problem. And so my experience was so good with that that I thought, well, when I come to the university, I want to set up my research team like a kind of like a mini asset team where we have, different disciplines, students with different disciplinary backgrounds working together and solving these research problems. I'm lucky in the sense that I'm, an engineer with a geoscience background.

And, so I have an adjunct professorship over in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and I have a professorship here in, in Earth, Energy and Environment, formerly Geoscience. And so I'm able to supervise, you know, geoscience and engineering students. I have them in the same lab working together on these problems. And, and, it's a great experience for the students. I think it, you know, invites innovation.

And new students have opportunities to lead projects and things like that. So there's that as well. And so that's kind of how we function internally. That's cool. And then the industry piece, that's critical to what we do obviously. So in our engagement with them kind of starts at the top where we have, an industry advisory board where we have representatives of all our sponsoring companies that help us make decisions on research direction.

You know what, you know, grant opportunities, should we pursue what are the main, you know, objectives of that research? So that's important really working with them to guide the research. And then of course, there's, the day to day working with the industry, on projects. So we, you know, probably as closely as anybody here on campus. We work with our industry partners to, to collaborate on research projects, and they have representatives that come in and help mentor the students and help define the projects, you know, way beyond providing data.

And they're the ones that make it happen, right? You know, so, we've been lucky because we've had partners that are willing to try things in the field. DFIT-FBA, we presented the idea at a sponsor's meeting. And then just a few months later, one of the operators said, hey, we're going to we're going to try this. - Cool. - We're going to go try it and see what happens.

And fortunately, it was a successful test. Yeah. And, and so that's we need to have those partners that are willing to try and, and we've been very fortunate to have partners do that. So that's, that's kind of how we work. You know, it's like I said, asset teams internally that are working on partnership, or partner problems and, and solving those problems collaboratively is really how we operate. So we go the TOC, but you've also launched the Transitional Energy Consortium. - So the TEC. - Yeah.

So can you tell us a bit more about this initiative too? Oh happy to so yeah, it gets a little confusing internally as you TOC, TEC, - you know, which ones which? - Yeah. And yeah, there's, you know obviously relationship between the two. So we going back a few years ago now we realize based on, what we were seeing with some of the technologies in the TOC, that we could also apply those technologies to what we call Subsurface Transitional Energy Pathways, or STEPS. - Okay. - STEPS. So keep that's an acronym. And what are those.

So those are things such as, you know, CO2... geological CO2 storage, geothermal energy, hydrogen production and storage and critical elements recovery. You realize those technologies can be applicable to that.

And, and so that's really the remit of TEC is to take those technologies that have been developed through TOC, adopt them to, to subsurface transitional energy pathways, but also, of course, develop some new technology. So even before TEC started, we work with a company called Cv̄ictus, and we, helped to design, implement and analyze a CO2 injection pilot, in the deep Manville coal, right here in Alberta. And, so we, designed the testing for them, analyze the data for them. And a lot of the, well, testing techniques that we applied and their analysis methods and things like that were things that we had learned through TOC just applied to coal and to CO2 injection in coal. And so that was really the start of me going, well geez... we should really expand this.

And formalize it in in the new consortium. So it was a great experience. And then once TEC was formed, we really started to explore that more actively. Another example is we're working with several companies that are looking at, injecting CO2 into the Leduc Formation here, again, in Alberta. But now, companies are looking at, places where, you know, there there isn't oil.

It's it's more brine or, you know, deep saline aquifer, system. They're looking for places to, to store the CO2 in these saline aquifer systems. So we've been working with these operators, trying to to, evaluate, the reservoir properties both in the Leduc, as well as in the, the caprock and to seal through the CO2 system using again, laboratory methods just like what we have here in this lab. And that is a Leduc core, trying to characterize the properties and, and helping understand, you know, how much CO2 can we inject? And you know, how how mobile is it going to be when it gets into the reservoir? You know, is it going to stay there? Is the seal appropriate? So we've got the technologies to help quantify that. And so yeah, several operators working with them.

We've got projects and critical element recovery. We're looking at hydrogen injection and storage in the coal and other reservoirs as well. We've demonstrated that we can apply post fracture pressure to K, DFIT-FBA to characterize the, the fracturing in, in these deep geothermal systems as well.

So, yeah, we're having fun with it. And as soon as we started with the idea of TEC, it just the light bulb went on and all these new ideas and, and research, pathways really, you know, we've been kind of riding that wave now for a couple of years, and it's very exciting time for us. So yeah, that's a reason to use the existing tech from TOC and just applying it to another section. That's so cool. It's been a great couple of years working on that type of stuff. How do you have any time? It's tough, but I'm always, you know, every time a new research idea comes up, I'll give you an example. I was,

looking at I was at a conference a couple of years ago, and and inter. Well, communication's a big thing, right? You know, how do we evaluate, wells when they're talking to each other, you know, how do we apply RTA, which is really a single, well, technique to that problem. And I had this idea coming home on the plains.

And that's I texted, one of my research associates. Hey, can you try this real quick? I'm like, I gotta see if it works. And, so you're always willing to just, you know, it's an idea. Comes to you. You got to pursue it right away.

And it's been a lot of cases like that where it just the RTAPK was the same thing. The light bulb comes on and it's like, oh, we got to try this right away, see if it works. And it's just they're always willing to make time for that. Chris, it’s like your work is just it's such a great demonstration of really academic and industry partnership.

And I was curious what like what advice would you have for other researchers who are really looking to engage industry? I'm going to take a page from, my my friend and colleague, Greg Welch, who I know you interviewed here. Instead of offering advice, maybe share experience. Yeah. Probably a better way to look at that. You know, I, I came from again, from an industry background and, one of the things I learned as part of that is really what drives the industry. What are they looking for when it comes to R&D? What what are they they trying to achieve? And at the end of the day, they have to demonstrate that whatever technology that they adopt has to add value to their company, to their shareholders.

You know, they want to look for competitive advantage. That's always a big thing. So you know, developing or working on technologies that, obviously have impact for them is is kind of priority number one. I got a little insight into that. I work for a company and I was working for, a research group on unconventional resources. And our group actually sponsored research at different universities.

I’m not going to say who. - Yeah. You know, in order to to justify funding, for, for a particular school, you know, we had to look at we had metrics and, and, and obviously there's a lot of those metrics were, you know, how is this going to impact our business and things like that. So I got a lot of insight into how that work as part of one of my roles, you know, just a little insider information. And and so that that helped me understand, okay. You know, how do we sell the technology, if you will, to the, to the companies and, and so, that really gave me, a way to our strategy to engage industry partners.

So obviously doing that kind of research and trying to figure out what's impactful, maybe what isn't so much, was important. And, and once we started to get some, traction in the research side in RTA and things like that, you know, obviously taking that and advertising it as well as, you can see, easier to do today. Right? And with social media and webinars, podcasts, all these things, they didn't really exist, you know, going back to 15 years ago. And so, you know, we did it the old fashioned way, conferences, networking with, with industry partners. I would incorporate the research into my short courses to show, hey, you know, what we're doing, in the research side is really impacting, the technology. So that was a very, very effective way to educate the partners on what we could do in the research space.

And in fact, you know, a lot of our TOC sponsors are a direct result of those, those, short courses, because they could really connect the dots on how your research could impact what they're doing. And that's really been the strategy that we've used from day one with TOC and, and now TEC as well. And I know like in our Office of Vice-President (Research) here we do now like there's a newer team that is like industry partnerships for research. So like we have a team that can help support researchers across campus who maybe not have those connections to begin with. Like, right, you guys as well established.

So it's really, I think, an exciting time for other faculty members to look at how they can engage with industry. As I get further along in my career or realize, you know, there's I have to spend some time and try to help others in that space, too, and I'm happy to do that. So, let me know if you need something. So you talked about this a bit like your, you know, coming from industry, you know, being a professional engineer, like, and then coming to a faculty role and like, you've talked about like some of the skills like, you know, recognizing like the business cycles and like building teams and like continuously interdisciplinary collaboration that way. Is that really been the most translational stuff from industry to research? Would you say? You know, a little bit on my history.

So before I went to industry, I, I did an undergrad degree in, in geological engineering, in the, my, my graduate work was really chemical engineering. And then when I came to the industry, I was a petroleum engineer. So, you know, these are different skill sets, right? And and, so going through that process, particularly when I got into industry, made me realize, you know, you have to be flexible, you have to be open.

You have to be willing to learn new things outside your discipline. And really, that multidisciplinary element became very important to me, in terms of, you know, working with those teams, learning what others did, what others do, and then becoming more multidisciplinary yourself, learning to communicate effectively with your team members. That is a critical thing. So soft skills were important. You know, and then presenting because we many times they had to present to senior management.

All of those skills became very, very important once they came into academia because I applied them to our sponsors as well. And, so a lot of soft skills, communication, learning to be part of a team, those are all things that we try to teach our, our students and our and our other researchers in our group as well. So my last question, and it's kind of a bit more of a retrospective question, right? We're you know, we're talking about you, you know, coming to university like the shale, the big shale gas boom at that point.

- Yeah. So like, how much like has the energy research landscape, like at the university really changed? And like, what are the trends and things that you're seeing now? When I first came here, the shale gas boom was on a lot of, you know, I was part of the new wave of, you know, researchers focused on unconventional hydrocarbon resources, you know, tight oil and gas, shale gas, shale oil, coalbed methane, those types of things. And, and pretty early on, I actually had, an opportunity to work with the VPR office. At the time, of course, Dr. McCauley was the head of it, was the VPR, and

he asked me to be involved in helping develop the energy research strategy at the time and to be involved at that level and trying to impact the direction of the university in that, in that space, but was very much hydrocarbon focused, although we did at that time recognize, you know, low carbon energy sources, is being important. And there was a component to that as well. But yeah, so that was kind of the dominant, area of research at the time.

And that served us very well, obviously. You know, it was, important in terms of, the CFREF that we were able to work in, in those areas to the Global Research Initiative. Right? Yes. Yeah. And then over time, where we were starting to see more of a,

a transition to transitional energy, topics, and that's nicely captured by the new energy research strategy that was rolled out last year. And so we've seen this move towards transitional energy, which is fantastic. I mean, obviously, the things that we're doing in Transitional Energy Consortium very aligned with that new strategy.

And then more recently and very, very importantly, is the transdisciplinary element that's become a very big priority for the university. What does that mean to us? Well, that means, you know, getting outside your discipline and seeing, you know, how to do research that involves, people outside that discipline that are not necessarily technical writers, with these transitional energy ideas. It's not they're not just technical problems that we're solving. There's there's issues related to regulatory, legal issues, societal impacts, social license type issues that you have to be aware of and, and, and potentially do active research in that area.

An example of that is, is what we're dealing with with Transitional Energy Consortium is this idea of shared core space where you can use a reservoir, subsurface reservoir for multiple purposes. You know, give you an example, the the Leduc formation, going back to that, the deep saline aquifers in the Leduc, people are looking at that for CO2 storage. People are looking at that for critical element recovery. They're looking at a for geothermal recovery and which is great, the technical challenges associated with that. But beyond the technical challenges, there's legal issues, right? I mean, if you inject CO2 in one well, and that CO2 migrates over to a to, well that's extracting brine for critical element recovery and you're taking CO2 out of the reservoir. That's, you know, there's legal issues, it's regulatory issues, in fact, that probably got the hydrocarbon industry in a lot of trouble in the past.

They didn't consider a lot of these things. Whereas now we realize that that's so critical. Moving this transitional energy forward, we have to consider all these things and, and have to actively engage.

And we also have to do research in these areas. And, and so that's I think the university is very much aligned in that space. And I think that's important going forward in terms of the future of energy.

Well, Chris, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule and letting us you know, be in your lab and telling us all about the TOC and TEC. And it's just really fantastic, so thank you so much. Thank you. Just, appreciate the opportunity to to share what we've been doing. And I hope it was useful. And congrats again on your NSERC Synergy award! Thank you so much. Appreciate that.

You can find links in our episode description to learn more about Chris's research with the Tight Oil Consortium and the Transitional Energy Consortium. and to find out how to move your Research-to-Impact in the UCalgary Innovation Ecosystem, visit UCalgary.ca/Innovation

2025-01-21 19:16

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