Energy, Resources and the Environment

In NY Times: Butting Heads in the Himalayas

ERE Matters May 19, 2015

The environment we live in is shaped by many factors. It is not just how we use the land, resources and energy that is provided to us, there may also be factors that are simply out of our control. In recent weeks, this has become painfully clear in the area near Kathmandu, Nepal. Two devastating earthquakes have taken place within only a short amount of time, leaving a trail of destruction. We know that these earthquakes are the result of India moving towards the Eurasian continent, but what is driving India to move so fast, ploughing though the Earth’s crust like a bulldozer? Just like India is butting heads with Eurasia in the Himalayas, scienstists seem to be butting heads over the Himalayas, with multiple hypotheses trying to explain the complicated plate tectonics in the area…

Want to know more? Read all about it in this article in the New York Times! 🙂

Sunset from 20,000 feet on Mount Ama Dablam, Nepal – photo by Suzanne Imber (taken from ImagGeo)

From EGU to the Real World: meet ERE Young Scientist Farhana Huq

ERE Matters May 18, 2015

The ERE Division loves to hear from its Young/Early Career Scientists. What is it that you do that relates to ERE? What lies beyond an ERE-oriented study or PhD? Tell us what you like about working on Energy, Resources and Environment-related research. We’d love to hear it! 🙂

Today we have Farhana Huq, who gives us some insight into how her PhD project lead to a job on the boundary between academia and industry, and what she likes about attending the EGU General Assembly.

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Just as an introduction, I am Farhana from Bangladesh, working as a scientist at the Institute for Energy Technology in Norway. During my PhD research, I studied the chemical changes in rock and fluid composition upon CO₂ injection under simulated reservoir conditions on the laboratory scale. This project was performed under the framework of the BMBF CLEAN project, which aimed at understanding large-scale enhanced gas recovery by CO₂ injection into the Altmark natural gas reservoir, Germany.

My current research activities are mostly focused on CO₂ storage and monitoring techniques with oil and gas industries. I am involved in developing different monitoring techniques using solid sorbents and tracer solutions. Recently my interest shifted quite a lot to stable isotope techniques and gas geochemistry and applications of it into field scale.

EGU has always been a great platform for me to meet new people, making contacts, learning on different topics, exchanging ideas and last but not least making wonderful friends. Starting from 2010 till now, I have tried to attend EGU sessions regularly and mostly contributed in ERE division sessions by presenting posters. Every time, I returned home with very good ideas, suggestions and constructive criticism from scientists from all over the world. This year was special as I was the young scientist representative for the ERE division, as a replacement for Sian, which gave me a huge opportunity to meet young and energetic scientists from various research fields. I wish and suggest to have more meetings and activities related to collaboration, networking, workshops and training within the young scientist forum.

EGU is not just for science, but also a great way to meet new friends!

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What to see at EGU?: Words on Wednesday – The Green River Natural Analogue as A Field Laboratory To Study the Long-term Fate of CO2 in the subsurface

ERE Matters April 8, 2015

Words on Wednesday aims at promoting interesting/fun/exciting publications on topics related to Energy, Resources and the Environment. If you would like to be featured on WoW, please send us a link of the paper, or your own post, at ERE.Matters@gmail.com.

If you are interested in today’s WoW, some of the results will be presented during the EGU in session ERE5.2 Field methods and analysis of field data for CO2 geological storage, on Thursday at 15.30h in room R8. So go check it out! 🙂

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Busch, A. Kampman, N. Hangx, S.J.T., Snippe, J., Bickle, M. Bertier, P., Chapman, H., Spiers, C.J., Pijnenburg, R.Samuelson, J. Evans, J.P., Maskell, A., Nicholl, J., Pipich, V., Di, Z., Rother, G., Schaller, M., 2014. The Green River Natural Analogue as a field laboratory to study the long-term faith of CO₂ in the subsurface. Energy Procedia 63, 2821-2830.

Abstract:

Understanding the long-term response of CO₂ injected into porous reservoirs is one of the most important aspects to demonstrate safe and permanent storage. In order to provide quantitative constraints on the long-term impacts of CO₂-charged fluids on the integrity of reservoir-caprock systems we recovered some 300m of core from a scientific drill hole through a natural CO₂ reservoir, near Green River, Utah. We obtained geomechanical, mineralogical, geochemical, petrophysical and mineralogical laboratory data along the entire length of the core and from non CO₂-charged control samples. Furthermore, we performed more detailed studies through portions of low permeability layers in direct contact with CO₂-charged layers. This was done to constrain the nature and penetration depths of CO₂-promoted fluid-mineral reaction fronts. The major reactions identified include the dissolution of diagenetic dolomite cements and hematite grain coatings, and the precipitation of ankerite and pyrite and have been used as input for geochemical 1D reactive transport modelling, to constrain the magnitude and velocity of the mineral-fluid reaction front.

In addition, we compared geomechanical data from the CO₂-exposed core and related unreacted control samples to assess the mechanical stability of reservoir and seal rocks in a CO₂ storage complex following mineral dissolution and precipitation for thousands of years. The obtained mechanical parameters were coupled to mineralogy and porosity. Key aim of this work was to better quantify the effect of long-term chemical CO₂/brine/rock interactions on the mechanical strength and elastic properties of the studied formations.

Entrada formation from surface to top Carmel Fm with CO2-charged sandstone layer, overlain by a low permeability clayey siltstone showing bleaching and CO2 reaction features. A sharp contact between bleached and unbleached is observed.

What to see at EGU?: ERE 1.3 Fractures, mechanics and flow in tight reservoirs

ERE Matters April 7, 2015

Within a week the EGU General Assembly will kick off! This year the topic will be A Voyage Through Scales. For those that will attend for the first time, the scale of EGU itself may be impressive enough already. So how do you decide where to go? Here we hope to point you to a few interesting sessions, in case you get completely lost.

Today we asked Dr. Maartje Houben, one of the Young Scientists co-convening an ERE session, what we can expect from her session.

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Fractures, mechanics and flow in tight reservoirs matter as well!

Unconventional oil and gas is often trapped in badly connected or even unconnected pores in the host rock (e.g. shales, tight sandstones). Hence, the presence of natural and/or induced fractures has become increasingly important in the exploitation of these natural resources. Especially in rocks with low matrix permeability’s the presence of fractures is crucial for reaching sufficient flow rates to economically produce hydrocarbons from these rocks. In addition, in order to extract heat or electricity from low-permeable geothermal reservoirs a natural or mechanical induced fracture network is also needed to improve fluid migration pathways into these reservoirs.

To discuss the interaction between fractures, mechanics and flow in all these tight reservoirs we organize the new ERE1.3 PICO session on Tuesday afternoon between 13 and 15 hrs. The session is a multi-disciplinary session and the contributors will give new insights through fast and interactive PICO presentations. A series of short 2-min madness presentations of each contribution will be followed by circa 1 hour of lively discussions in front of interactive PICO screens. The contributions will show (sub)surface fracture arrangements in tight reservoirs, either natural or modelled, and their relation to mechanical changes and changed flow behavior in these reservoirs on a multitude of scales.

Please join us on Tuesday afternoon for this exciting new session!

Schematic diagram of a tight reservoir

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For those who are curious about what PICO is…

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