The oil and gas application team will leverage past contributions to safe offshore oil and gas production. The team will develop a better understanding of safe production methods to improve predictive design and diagnostic tools.
Access to unique facilities at Louisiana State University and The University of Tulsa will also aid in conducting research.
Team Leads
Oil and gas application team leads are:
- Cem Sarica (The University of Tulsa)
- Kelly Rose (National Energy Technology Laboratory)
- Yucel Akkutlu (Texas A&M University)
- Saeed Salehi (University of Oklahoma)
Focus Areas
The team’s focus areas are:
- Offshore drilling: Drilling safety is challenging due to the narrower margin of formation and fracture pressures in offshore drilling operations. Models accurately estimating wellbore stresses must be determined while also considering drilling techniques to control the bottom hole pressure. Models will be validated using Texas A&M University and The University of Tulsa laboratory facilities.
- Well control: The team will focus on well control from a safety perspective over the life of the well, kick migration/behavior (both theoretical and experimental) and early kick detection, modeling and prevention. Accurate modeling of fluid and heat flow (Cross-Functional Team 4) in the annulus and early detection of kicks through fluid and heat flow modeling is the best way to avoid a kick becoming a blowout.
- Production safety: Safer and cleaner oil and gas production requires failure-free transportation from offshore fields through seafloor flowlines. We will focus on the effect of pressure on internal corrosion (Cross-Functional Team 3), and the effect of fluid flow-pipe components interaction and its impact on fatigue and integrity. The impact of pressure and temperature on hydrate formation and development of early leak detection systems for subsea flowlines will also be investigated.
- Subsea processing: Although there have been several attempts to implement subsea processing, widespread implementation has not occurred mostly because of a lack of reliable, safe and viable solutions. We will address several challenges such as subsea compact separation of solids, water, oil and gas; subsea water injection and management; subsea single-phase and multiphase boosting.
- Flow assurance and control: In conjunction with findings from safer and cleaner production and early leak detection systems, this team will investigate hydrate blockage tendencies of offshore oil and gas transport lines, as well as the multiscale assessment of paraffin precipitation and deposition phenomenon.
