About Social Media Today
As this community knows all too well, the demand for energy is rapidly increasing. Over the next 20 years, the world population is expected to grow by 20 percent – meaning there will be over 8 billion neighbors on earth by 2030. Every part of the energy system – companies that find and produce energy, consumers seeking low cost products, and governments that regulate energy use – is under significant pressure to meet that demand today and in the future.
A combination of innovative technology and the know-how to deploy it on a massive scale will be required to deliver the energy needed now and the breakthroughs critical for the future.
In my role as Chief Technology Officer at Chevron, I see firsthand how some of the most sophisticated technology on the planet is getting more out of existing resources, reducing carbon, producing cleaner burning natural gas, improving energy efficiency and leading to the development of emerging energy sources. These new technologies, like high performance computers, undersea robots and million cell simulators, are enabling energy suppliers to locate, access and produce new sources of energy in new-found ways and in harder-to-reach places.
The energy industry is continuing to make significant steps in the creation and improvement of energy-producing technologies. Of all the innovations currently being developed and applied, the following technologies are among those delivering some of the most promising results:
Exploration: In places like the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, geologists and geophysicists are able to see through thousands of feet of rock and sub-salt by using sophisticated seismic imaging to create high-definition pictures of subsurface geology. The result is similar to an X-ray scan or medical sonogram that covers thousands of square miles and extends miles and miles into the earth. Once data is gathered, scientific algorithms and high performance computing are applied to see beneath the surface more clearly and accurately to identify potential resources.
Production: Fifty years ago, engineers discovered that heating heavy oil with steam made it less viscous and more recoverable. Today, steamflooding is used around the world to increase yields in heavy oil fields. Unique approaches to steamflooding have led to higher recovery at lower costs by optimizing steam injection – injecting the right amount of steam, at the right time, in the right place. For example, Chevron’s Kern River Field in California and the Duri Field in Indonesia have recovery rates up to 75 percent - compared to less than 10 percent without steam.
Refining: In the ever-changing world of fuels, technology helps ensure that the crude oil extracted from the ground becomes the energy the world needs. This requires the implementation of a number of technologies and techniques into the refining process, such as specialized catalysts, to turn the crude oil into high-quality, high-value petroleum products that customers demand. Catalysts cause chemical reactions that help convert the crude oil into different products. Developing the right kind of catalyst can make more high-value products.
Carbon Injection: Carbon capture and storage is part of a portfolio of emerging energy technologies to help manage carbon. As natural gas is extracted, the carbon is separated from the gas, compressed, and injected into an underground reservoir. Some reservoirs are depleted oil and natural gas formations, while others are deep saline aquifers capable of storing significant amounts of carbon. According to the IPCC, geological formations provide 2,000 gigatonnes of potential carbon storage capacity. These formations are limited in a practical sense to those commercially economic projects such as the Gorgon natural gas project in Australia, which is expected to reduce the overall emissions by nearly 40 percent.
Advanced Biofuels: Biofuels complement petroleum-based transportation fuels and will play an increasingly important role in meeting the world’s growing energy needs. The development of biofuels shares many of the same characteristics as the development of petroleum in that it involves using advanced engineering and manufacturing to transform raw materials provided by nature into high-quality transportation fuels. While the research is promising, significant challenges, including scalability, sustainability, cost and regulations, must be overcome to ensure advanced biofuels can become commercial at large scale.
The challenges facing our energy future are immense, yet so are the opportunities for human ingenuity to create solutions. Overcoming these challenges will depend on collaboration, innovative partnerships and technology breakthroughs. Working together, energy companies, private industry, governments and academic and research institutions can, and will, meet the energy challenge.
