LARAMIE — Oil wells today still leave most of their resources trapped in the ground. Anywhere from 85% to 95% of the resource remains in tight oil rocks that won’t let go of their black gold.
Cracking the code to squeezing even 1% more from those rocks is worth billions of dollars to the oil and gas sector, and it’s an area where Wyoming has been quietly taking a worldwide lead.
Wyoming is so far ahead of the pack on this, in fact, that ThermoFisher Scientific, an applied science research company and a Fortune 500 company, has just placed a $40 million bet that the Cowboy State will be where the next big innovation in oil and gas extraction happens.
ThermoFisher’s $40 million bet has been matched by another $40 million from the Wyoming Legislature for a total of $80 million that will be flowing into the Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media, headed by Dr. Mohammed Piri at University of Wyoming’s High Bay Research Facility.
Piri told Cowboy State Daily the money will be used to acquire new scientists and new instrumentation, as well as corresponding software decks to integrate artificial intelligence on huge, three-dimensional data sets from Wyoming and other oil and gas plays.
The results of this ongoing work won’t just be a game changer for Wyoming oil and gas companies. It will be game-changing for the world.
“These resources are so vast, so incredible in volume that 1 or 2% recovery is just an enormous additional economy,” Piri said. “Can you imagine if this — especially with the wells that we have already fractured, we have a lot of them.
“The idea is to use this technology to better understand how these fluids are trapped, and how they can be mobilized, and then go after recovering that. Even 1 or 2 % will be enormous not just for Wyoming, but for the country.”
How To Squeeze A Rock Sponge
The shale and sandstone rock formations where oil and gas are found in places like the Powder River Basin of Wyoming at first glance look impervious to the naked human eye.
In fact, geologists for decades believed that the oil in such rocks would never be recovered at all.
But looks are deceiving, and in reality these so-called tight oil rocks are riddled with teeny tiny holes called pores. They range in size from a few nanometers at the smallest to a few micrometers at the largest.
The tiny pores are where all the oil and gas is trapped. It’s a bit like a sponge, except that unlike a sponge, these rocks are very hard. They’re not at all easy to squeeze.
That’s required some clever tricks to coax any oil at all out of these vast reserves, and that’s where horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing came into play.
By boring sideways into these formations for a mile or 2 or even 3, oil wells can access a larger surface area of tight oil rock than they can by drilling vertically as in conventional oil wells.
But the well still won’t get a lot of oil. It takes the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids, which introduce thousands of tiny breaks in the oil-containing rocks.
Now the well is ready to produce.
Even with these techniques, though, it takes extremely high pressure to push any oil or gas out of these hard rock sponges. That’s why the existing oil and gas extraction process only gets 5% to 15% of the resource, leaving the rest behind.
Seeing The Invisible
When it comes to wringing more of that trapped oil out of tight rocks, one of the bigger challenges holding engineers and scientists back is simple but difficult logistics.
There’s no real way for the human eye to see what’s happening downhole in a hydraulically fractured well.
And that’s where Piri’s work shines.
“Oil companies give us rock samples and their fluid samples, and we can test it,” he said. “We can put it under pressure and temperature and then we can look at how the fluid is moving through them.”
Look might be something of a misnomer here, though. Piri is actually referring to electron microscopy, which uses a beam of electrons to look at things so tiny, they’re on an atomic scale.
By recreating the underground conditions of oil wells and looking at what’s going on with an electron microscope, Piri can create a sort of three-dimensional model of oil wells, allowing scientists and engineers to see how things are flowing and what’s really happening in these deep, underground places where the wells are drilled.
Not Just Oil Wells
With that understanding, a well can be put through its paces, testing out different ideas to see how the system might be tweaked to squeeze out a bit more oil.
“Then we can say to the company, maybe you can adjust your process this way,” Piri said. “Then you may recover more oil.”
Piri’s work doesn’t just apply to only oil wells.
It can also bring insight to other fluids that move through underground rocks like carbon dioxide for carbon storage and underground storage of hydrogen for fuel.
Wyoming has already been a leader in the carbon sequestration space for decades. Piri’s work could further position the state as a premier hub where large amounts of carbon can be stored underground for those businesses that want to reduce their emissions.
Nearby North Dakota is pursuing a similar strategy that dovetails into its oil and gas industry where, in theory, the state could one day claim that its barrels of oil and gas are not just zero carbon, but net negative.
A researcher at the Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media working at the University of Wyoming's High Bay Research Facility. (Courtesy University of Wyoming, Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media) 
Oil and gas research at the High Bay Research Facility at the University of Wyoming. (Courtesy University of Wyoming, Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media) 
A researcher at the Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media working at the University of Wyoming's High Bay Research Facility. (Courtesy University of Wyoming, Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media) 
A researcher at the Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media working at the University of Wyoming's High Bay Research Facility. (Courtesy University of Wyoming, Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media) 
The Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media on the Univesity of Wyoming campus in Laramie. (Courtesy University of Wyoming, Center of Innovation for Flow Through Porous Media)
Wyoming’s Research Is Leading The World
Given that even 1% or 2% additional oil extraction is worth millions of dollars for any given well, the potential for Piri’s cutting edge work is enormous, and it’s one of the reasons ThermoFisher Scientific chose to partner with the University of Wyoming.
“We collaborate with many different universities around the world,” ThermoFisher Scientific’s Senior Vice President of Analytical Instruments Group Dan Shine told Cowboy State Daily. “We came here and saw the incredible groundbreaking research Piri’s doing and when we partner with different universities, different professors, it’s really about where are the market leaders? What are the market requirements from those leaders that have better vision where the field is going, and then build that back into our product roadmap.”
Shine foresees the techniques Piri is developing doing work in many industries, not just for oil and gas.
“These are very broad-based tools,” Shine said. “You know, (three scientists) recently won the Nobel Prize (in chemistry) for looking at atomic protein structures recently. So, this (electron microscopy) technology actually serves many different industries.”
One of ThermoFisher’s interests is the green energy transition.
“When we think about some of the uses around carbon sequestration and getting more oil recovery out of the existing fields, and just looking at hydrogen batteries,” he said. “There are many different ways that this technology can support the energy transition, as well as a cleaner more sustainable environment.
“And that ties back to our mission, where we enable customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer, and this collaboration will help us support that mission.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
