Michigan Tech Researchers Receive $1 Million DOE Grant
Contact: Marcia Goodrich (mlgoodri@mtu.edu; 906-487-2343)
HOUGHTON--Two Michigan Technological University researchers have received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate a technique that may increase the yield of oil wells.
Research Professor Roger Turpening and Professor Wayne Pennington, of MTU's Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, will undertake the study at a very special site in lower Michigan that is tailor-made to investigate this seismic technology and others used in oil exploration.
With the $1 million grant and another $250,000 from private industry, the researchers will look into the process known as sonic stimulation, or sonification. "We'll be trying to find out how it works," Pennington said.
Sonification has its roots back in the 1950s, when water well drillers noticed that vibrations from passing trains seemed to make water rise in their wells. Thirty years later, Russians placed seismic vibrators above their oil fields to try to yield more oil, with mixed results.
The MTU sonification research will take place south of Traverse City, at a site that includes two 6,500-foot boreholes on opposite sides of an existing well owned by Shell Oil Company. In one hole, scientists can operate the various seismic tools used in oil exploration. In the other, they have receivers to measure the vibrations after they travel through the formations between the holes. The site has a special advantage: because it spans a producing oil reservoir, the researchers can also study how (or if) different techniques affect oil production.
The test site was previously operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is now handing its operations over to Michigan Tech. The MTU scientists have just concluded one project there with WesternGeco, an oilfield services company.
When the field work for the DOE-sponsored project starts next summer, the researchers will measure the factors associated with the different tools used in sonification. Then, they'll invite industry to test their own equipment in what is essentially a laboratory in the field.
"We'll have so much control, we'll learn a lot about it," Pennington said. "This should give us a really good idea of how sonification works."
Ultimately, they hope to develop a set of standards for measuring and evaluating sonification technologies, so they can be more effective and predictable.
Turpening, who came to Michigan Tech from MIT to continue the test site experiments, is optimistic, in part because its geology has been so thoroughly studied during previous projects.
"We've been shooting an experiment almost every year here for the last 20 years," he said. "We could be wrong, but after you've shot something every which way to Sunday, it's hard to be wrong."
7/31/02--MTN084