May 24 2012
This month, Energy Digital discusses Wavefront Technology Solutions' revolutionary PowerWave technology and its potential to increase oil supplies in the US more than proposals for the pursuit of oil sands.
With prices at the pump skyrocketing and international oil supplies at risk, many believe the answer is to drill more or follow through with the Keystone XL pipeline, pumping crude from Canadian oil sands into refineries deep in the US. But what about the stockpile of domestic oil resources right below our feet?
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that there are up to 430 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the U.S., with more working oil and gas rigs than any other country in the world. The problem is, hundreds of oil wells shut down earlier than necessary, because the remaining oil is considered "stranded." Up until this point in time, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has only been able to go so far, typically leaving about 80 percent of oil behind.
Wavefront Technology Solutions, a Canadian based company, has devised a solution for extending the life of those wells using advanced technologies without posing a risk to the environment. Using its specialized PowerWave equipment, oil companies can slow the rate of production decline and extend the life of oil fields by 10 percent or more in most cases.
"We don't have to necessarily drill as many wells to get the same, or greater, amount of oil from the ground," says Wavefront's CEO Brett Davidson. "By applying PowerWave as an optimization technique to current methods being used for EOR, we might be able to reduce the overall number of wells being drilled by maximizing oil recovery."
Davidson explains that Wavefront's technologies have enormous potential in tapping the US's abundantly, hard to reach oil supplies. Although the technology is only in about one percent of the number of wells available for EOR, PowerWave's proven success and continuous growth is expected to become commonplace throughout the industry and have a real impact on domestic energy security.
"That's a big win for the industry moving forward-that we can revisit mature or abandoned assets, revitalize them and squeeze more ounces out of them."
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