Overview of the Ongoing Research

Welcome to the Petroleum Research Center (PERC) at the University of Utah. This is one of the most exciting periods in history for those of us working in energy-related research. Supplying energy to a growing global population without harming the environment irreversibly is the greatest challenge of this generation. Fossil fuels and conventional crude oil and gas resources contribute a significant portion of the world’s energy needs. While it is important to ensure efficient production and utilization of these high-quality resources, it is also necessary to vigorously explore the possibilities of using vast unconventional petroleum reserves. In this context, research on unconventional gas reservoirs (tight gas, shale gas and coal-bed methane), and oil shale and oil sands will become increasingly important. It is also becoming clear that we are living in a carbon-constrained world. As we transition to a more diversified energy portfolio, we will be able to use our vast knowledge and experience in subsurface reactive transport to help find ways of storing large quantities of carbon dioxide safely in underground formations. Our work in the areas of Flow Assurance is motivated by the fact that better understanding of the chemistry of fluids (oils) leads to improved property predictions, which in turn helps us produce, transport and use these fluids more effectively. Our emphasis has been on thermodynamics of wax and asphaltene precipitation, and resultant rheology and pipeline flow. Efficiency can also be realized by managing oil and gas reservoirs. Fractures and faults are critical in determining the performance of reservoirs. We have developed new reservoir simulators capable of handling fractures and faults explicitly as alternatives to traditional dual porosity, dual permeability models. These are modular, parallel simulators equipped with modern linear and nonlinear solvers. The chemical characterization and property prediction have applicability in recovery and processing of oil sands and oil shale. Modeling micro and macro fractures is also important in understanding in-situ production of oil from oil shale, which typically has low inherent permeability. Fractures are also critical in establishing the production potential of tight gas and shale gas reservoirs Reactive multiphase transport is important in CO₂ sequestration applications, and in-situ oil production. Integrity of CO₂ sequestration depends on the sealing capacity of faults, among other things. All of the above components, particularly, the high-performance computing reservoir models will benefit from the use of better mathematical tools. Our vision is to continue working on the interconnected program components shown.