R&D

A project spearheaded by Exxon­Mobil, Shell, Chevron, and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been established to advance separation technology through improved testing methods and collaboration between users and suppliers.

It has been an impressive comeback for a technology that once stood on the brink of failure. The upstream oil and gas industry has largely resolved crippling technical challenges that shortened the life of fiber-optic cables in downhole applications and is now working on a big encore.

DuPont is ramping up the commercial-scale implementation of its microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) method after nearly a decade of development and testing of what it says is a low-risk way to improve production from mature fields.

After a year of field testing, a new type of biopolymer developed by Wintershall, Germany’s largest oil and gas producer, is showing promise as an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) tool in one of the country’s longest producing oil fields.

Over the next decade, the number of electrically powered subsea systems in operation around the world will increase as companies adopt new technologies to produce oil and gas offshore more efficiently.

The world's first full-scale subsea gas compression system is the final stages of construction and is on schedule to be installed in the Åsgard gas field offshore Norway by year's end.

Offshore engineering companies are taking existing technologies and lessons learned from floating rigs to create a new platform design that will allow drilling in deeper waters.