The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office (HGEO) will distribute $150 million to tap unconventional energy reserves as it invests in the development and deployment of innovative technologies.
The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) prioritizes technology geared for oil and gas reservoirs, promoting groundbreaking solutions for enhancing recovery efficiency and water management within the fossil fuel industry. Applications are due by Sept. 8.
Awards will go toward cost-shared projects directed at four critical priorities:
- Improving recovery efficiency from unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.
- Advancing hydraulic fracture characterization technologies.
- Improving recovery of oil and gas from unconventional reservoirs using CO2.
- Developing innovative solutions for produced water treatment.
Aligned with the federal government’s renewed focus on dominating the energy market, proposed initiatives must address technical, economic and environmental barriers spread across these topic areas.
Technologies designed to enhance recovery from unconventional oil and gas reserves target unrealized pockets of fossil fuels at sites where recovery rates are typically below 10%. These areas contain untapped potential for significant oil and gas recovery, requiring the use of alternative injectants depending on the site’s geological makeup.
These projects will help improve extraction processes, increase the recovery factor and lower the break-even cost to enable efficient, feasible procurement. The DOE anticipates awarding up to $30 million across two projects.
Funding for developing advanced characterization of fracture propagation, proppant behavior and well diagnostics to help the industry further understand interactions throughout the recovery process. Projects must conduct field test site investigations to develop advanced characterization, enhanced diagnostics, well completion best practices and depletion domain architectures.
These efforts will help operators extract more resources efficiently by learning about available recoverable resources that might otherwise be overlooked. Up to $36 million will be delivered for roughly three projects in this category.
The use of CO2 to improve industry recovery efforts in unconventional reservoirs is of particular interest to the DOE. Producers have historically used several other injectants across multiple geological variations and situations to source oil and gas. The program will provide funding for projects that specifically focus on using CO2 as a viable injectant and determining its viability for widespread usage. The program will deliver up to $60 million for up to three projects in this area.
The final topic area prioritizes the development of field-testing technologies and processes for multi-scale produced water treatment. Water management has been an ongoing issue across critical producing basins, where produced water can serve as a major contaminant if not handled appropriately. Technologies developed through this topic area must field test technologies and methods to reduce subsurface disposal, facilitate beneficial reuse and mitigate associated environmental risks. The remaining $24 million will go toward these initiatives.
Entities that may apply for funding through this program include:
- Institutions of higher education.
- For-profit organizations.
- Nonprofit organizations.
- State and local government entities.
- Indian Tribes.
All participants must contribute at least 20% of the total project costs to be eligible for awards.
Photo by G. Edward Johnson, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons
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