Table of Contents

Vol. 6, No. 4
4th Quarter 2000

DOE's Tulsa Office to Become Oil Technology Arm of National Energy Technology Laboratory

Previously, the Tulsa office - the National Petroleum Technology Office (NPTO) - operated as a separate part of the DOE’s Fossil Energy organization. The Tulsa office will now report to the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) located in Morgantown, WV, and Pittsburg, PA. The director of the Tulsa office will report directly to the NETL director.

NPTO’s 26 employee office will remain in Tulsa and will continue to be the lead site for coordinating the DOE’s oil technology program. The NPTO office will be a separately identifiable group within the NETL organization, comparable to the natural gas center. 

The domestic petroleum industry’s future will be determined largely by technology and streamlining coordination throughout the research complex is important in developing advances that can benefit domestic producers. Some of these benefits are:

• Strengthens collaboration in several important research areas and creates a tighter linkage between the petroleum technology program and the laboratory research structure.

• Better technology exchanges between NPTO in oil exploration & production efforts and the natural gas researchers at NETL.

• Integration will give petroleum specialists in Tulsa more immediate access to the Laboratory’s onsite research facilities and its research support capabilities.

For more information, please contact Robert C. Porter, Office of Fossil Energy, phone 202-586-6503, email robert.porter@hq.doe.gov

Offshore Technology Roadmap

After holding a series of workshops across the country this summer, the U.S. Department of Energy released the Offshore Technology Roadmap - a roadmap of future technology advancements that could help unlock potentially vast oil and natural gas resources beneath the ultra-deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico.

The goal is to achieve significant accelerated growth in oil and gas production from the western Gulf of Mexico in order to achieve national energy security and stabilize supplies of energy.

Development efforts, although rapid, are not proceeding fast enough - especially in water depths greater than 5,000 feet known as "ultra-deepwater" - to meet the economy's growing demand for energy or to slow the increasing reliance on imported supplies of oil. With the right technology, ultra-deepwater has the potential for delivering the needed supply at reasonable cost. The Offshore Technology Roadmap presents an assessment of the potential for collaboration among stakeholders for the development of needed technology. This has resulted in the first step toward bringing all of the stakeholders involved to not only identify the technology and other barriers to full development of the ultra-deepwater, but to identify the order of magnitude of investment needed for this collaboration.

The Offshore Technology Roadmap is the result of workshops held around the country during July and August. Workshop participants included representatives from the producer community, investors, technology suppliers/service companies, national laboratories, federal and state governments, and non-government organizations.

The Offshore Technology Roadmap was released to industry and other interested organizations on November 27 in Galveston, TX, and on November 28 in New Orleans, LA.

A copy of the Offshore Technology Roadmap can be found at www.fe.doe.gov

For more information, phone: Elena Subia Melchert, 202-586-5095, e-mail:  elena.melchert@hq.doe.gov

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Stripper Well R&D Consortium-JOIN BEFORE JAN 29

Last issue, we alerted readers to a DOE-Funded "Stripper Well R&D Consortium" that Pennsylvania State University and the University of Tulsa were coordinating. This national industry-driven consortium will focus on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and natural gas "stripper wells." DOE will provide up to $3.0 million over three years, to be matched with 30% cost share or $1.3 million from industry to fund projects selected by the consortium. Membership is required to propose R&D projects.

The consortium is actively soliciting members from industry, academia and trade and state organizations. Full membership is available for an annual fee of $1,000 to industrial or academic members, or $2,500 for a three-year membership. Full members can (1) steer research into areas of strategic importance to their companies, (2) individually or jointly, submit R&D proposals, and (3) gain access to low-cost technology transfer. Members will retain a five-year confidentiality period. Affiliate memberships are also available for state and trade organizations for $200 annually, or $500 for a three-year membership. Affiliate members are entitled to attend meetings that they may summarize for their organizations.

The consortium has identified three special interest areas-reservoir remediation, wellbore clean-up, and surface system optimization issues-in which R&D projects will be funded. Although these areas will be the primary focus of the program, the consortium will also consider other project proposals that focus on the well performance issue.

The first organizational meeting, when the executive council that will review R&D proposals will be elected, will be held on January 29, 2001 in Pittsburgh, Penn. Move quickly so your voice can be heard and the direction of the consortium influenced.

PTTC will monitor and report consortium activities and cooperate wherever possible in transferring project findings and insights to industry.

For further information or a membership application form, contact Joel Morrisson at Pennsylvania State University (phone 814-865-4802 or jlm9@psu.edu).