September 2005 ISSUE
THE KEYSER FILE
Wellhead Need an MRI?
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BY Tom Keyser
Freelance Columnist
The man who occupies the Canada Research Chair in Energy and Imaging hasn't started dabbling in medicine. So please, don’t be confused when Dr. Apostolos Kantzas, P.Eng., tells you he’s set up a mini-hospital in his University of Calgary lab.
But he is taking the same imaging tools used in computerized tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging — better known as CT and MRI — and applying them to problems in the production of conventional oil and gas.
“What we're trying do to is establish similar systems that we can put in the lab and apply them to oil and gas recovery processes," explains Dr. Kantzas, a specialist in both tomographic imaging and porous media. “So I have a mini-hospital with all kinds of medical equipment that I've scalped from hospitals at various times," he adds with a grin.
A large research team led by Dr. Kantzas is aiming, among other things, to develop sensors — based on magnetic resonance technology — that are able to record accurate measurements of oil, gas and subterranean water produced in the field. Right at the wellhead.
One of the most distinguished and celebrated Canadian researchers in his field, Dr. Kantzas is an accomplished multi-tasker who owns a C.V. as long as the Mackenzie River. It includes several years in private industry, by the way.
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Eye of the CAT |
An Energy Business Revolution?
Among his current priorities is the role he'll play within a U of C-based project he says is particularly exciting: the two-year-old Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy, known as ISEEE
Championed by U of C President Harvey Weingarten and directed by Robert Mansell, an acknowledged authority on energy policy, the institute is a collaborative and ambitious research program. ISEEE could even end up revolutionizing the Canadian energy business.
The institute is still in the process of attracting corporate partners and expert researchers to related fields of specialization. These include recovery and upgrading of resources from in-situ oil sands; sustainable development technology and alternative energy sources; carbon management; and water management.
A sprawling mandate, certainly. But, as one of its expert specialists, Dr. Kantzas applauds the institute’s interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.
“There are definite benefits to ISEEE's strategic thrust," he says. “ISEEE will help the oil and gas industry find new ways to explore and exploit resources, while keeping in mind the environmental issues so critical during such development."
ISEEE proposes to tackle many of the challenges that exploration and production companies once addressed behind the closed doors of their private laboratories. “The main thrust of my work is to find ways to get more oil from the ground."
The $60 Challenge
Oilpatch research and development pretty much withered
on the vine in the last long-term economic downturn, during the 1980s. But now that oil prices have been catapulted beyond $60 a barrel, research is back.
Most of the resource that's relatively easy to extract has already been brought to the surface. But 70 per cent of Alberta's conventional oil remains trapped within the Earth's crust.
“One of my jobs is to figure out how to get this extra oil out,” says Dr. Kantzas.
Some of the work is already done. Scientists have developed strategies for tapping hard-to-reach conventional reserves.
But until $60 oil came along, these techniques were too expensive to pull off the shelf.
“Nor have they been tested in the field, because of the cost," says. Dr. Kantzas. “Now people are a little more confident oil prices will remain buoyant for a while, so they might apply these new technologies a little more aggressively."
And ISEEE is there to help make it happen.
Although it's still early days, the institute has generated a significant buzz. People are excited that government funders, corporate partners and world-class researchers are coming together to create a cleaner, safer, more cost-efficient oilpatch.
As for Dr. Kantzas, he stresses there is no silver-bullet solution to enhanced recovery of conventional oil. But he does hope that ISEEE will, at last, offer him an opportunity to test breakthrough theories in the field.