RPSEA awards a major research grant to Rubin's research group (January 2004)RPSEA (Research Partnership for Securing Energy to America, a non-profit corporation formed by a consortium of universities, industry and independent research organizations to perform research relevant to the efficient exploration, production and transportation of natural gas resources) is funding the project called "Combined Use of Seismic and Resistivity Surveys for Enhanced Gas Reservoir Imaging and Exploration" proposed by Rubin's research group. The project will develop a new algorithm for directly imaging reservoir gas saturation from a combination of seismic an electromagnetic geophysical data. The new algorithm will use the latest developments in stochastic inversion for joining data sets that respond to different physical properties of the reservoir with all available prior information to make it possible to directly image gas saturation in a reservoir. The proposed methodology takes the strengths of seismic and elecromagnetic methods and provides a capability to discriminate economic from un-economic gas saturations in reservoirs. The project addresses the critical need for reliable means (which currently does not exist) of discriminating economic from un-economic gas saturation in gas sands present in deep and ultra-deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. The project is tied to potential indistrial users of the new technology as well as potential service/software providers of the technology. The economic impact of the successful completion of the project is in the 100s of millions of dollars per year. This number represents only three to four dry holes drilled for gas in deep water which could be avoided by prior use of the proposed technology. Links |