IOP Groups

Whither Oil & Gas?

Geoffrey C Maitland (Department of Energy Engineering, Imperial College, London)

Abstract

Oil and gas (and coal) will continue to provide a large fraction of our energy needs well into the middle of this century. Yet if fossil fuels are to play a full role in meeting the world’s rapidly growing energy demands without continuing to produce high carbon emissions and the accompanying climate change impact, it is imperative that we develop radical new ways of producing and using these resources in a more sustainable manner.

The talk focuses on four main directions that must be addressed:

1. More efficient recovery of existing hydrocarbon reserves
2. Exploitation of non-conventional sources of hydrocarbon
3. Mitigating the environmental impact of fossil fuels
4. Managing the transition from the hydrocarbon to an alternative energies economy

Typical current recoveries from conventional reservoirs are only 30-40% for sandstones, and even lower for carbonate reserves. So one challenge is to increase hydrocarbon recoveries significantly, from both new and so-called Brownfields (depleted) reservoirs. Improved primary production practices linked to real-time reservoir monitoring and management techniques, alongside smarter reservoir stimulation methods and improved water, sand and scale management will all contribute to achieving this target.

As conventional reserves decline and supply/demand imbalances lead to overall increases in oil and gas prices (not always steady or predictable!), so it becomes economic to exploit more difficult non-conventional reserves such as heavy crudes, tar sands, oil shales and gas hydrates. These bring huge technical challenges and require major innovations in production techniques; possible options will be described.

Exploiting both conventional and unconventional reserves must all be done in the context of increasing constraints on carbon emissions. Most current solutions for reducing carbon emissions focus on the use of fossil fuels. Yet there is huge potential impact in developing cleaner production processes and integrating into them much of the downstream processing.

The talk ends with the presentation of a vision of how we might produce hydrocarbons in the future.

^ To the top ^