Cambridge scientists are helping to improve the chances of success of oil exploration in some of the Earth’s most hostile frontiers.
Cambridge scientists are helping to improve the chances of success of oil exploration in some of the Earth’s most hostile frontiers.
With billions of dollars at stake, reducing uncertainties in oil exploration will help BP to continue their century-long success in exploration and production, bringing new reserves on stream to compensate for depleting global inventories.
Increasingly, companies such as BP are exploring for oil in very deep waters along the edges of the continents. Drilling beneath the seabed through rocks down to depths of 4 km and in water depths of nearly 3 km is both risky and costly. Scientists at the Bullard Laboratories in the Department of Earth Sciences are helping to reduce the uncertainty of finding oil in these hostile environments by developing an understanding of the structure and evolution of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
Dr Nicky White leads a project funded by BP that studies the prime focus of deep-sea oil exploration: submerged continental margins at the edges of ocean basins. It is in these regions that the thinning of the tectonic plate over many millions of years has generated rock layers and structures that have favoured oil formation and trapping. Over time, organic-rich rocks produce oil, which is expelled upwards, where it fills the pore spaces of a reservoir rock and is trapped in place by overlying impermeable rocks. For oil generation, it is crucial that the organic-rich rocks have been subjected to suitable temperatures for the right amount of time (thermal maturation) and it is here that Dr White’s group is providing invaluable new understanding.
The laboratory’s track record of active involvement with BP reaches back to Professor Dan McKenzie, whose fundamental work on plate tectonics in the 1970s and 1980s helped BP undergo a major refocus on exploring sedimentary basins around the world. Within 10 years, BP’s search for giant oil fields in frontier areas – known in the industry as ‘elephant hunting’ – resulted in a string of exploration successes in places such as the Gulf of Mexico, Angola, Egypt, Russia and Azerbaijan.
Dr White’s work continues this pioneering geophysical research, generating sophisticated numerical models of sub-surface conditions. Working with BP has been key to the research, as Dr White explained: ‘A quantitative understanding of thermal maturation is only possible with access to terabytes of high-quality seismic data. BP acquires amazing sub-surface images that we then interpret and model.’
With billions of dollars at stake, reducing uncertainties in oil exploration will help BP to continue their century-long success in exploration and production, bringing new reserves on stream to compensate for depleting global inventories.
For more information, please contact Dr Nicky White (nwhite@esc.cam.ac.uk).
BP
Energy giant BP looks to its engagement with universities like Cambridge to help stay connected to cutting-edge research in science and technology.
‘As head of BP’s research and technology portfolio, my job is to ensure that BP has the technology it needs to contribute to the world’s future energy demands,’ said David Eyton, BP Group Head of Research & Technology and Executive Sponsor for Cambridge. ‘As part of this, we work closely with a handful of excellent academic centres like Cambridge to keep us plugged into the fast-changing world of science and technology.’
BP’s relationship with the University, which stretches back through the past century, was recently formalised by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). ‘The MoU,’ David Eyton explained, ‘embraces all of our current interactions with Cambridge at a strategic level – from research activities, through policy development and training, to recruitment – as well as laying the groundwork for mutual support and development so that the relationship can fulfil its greatest potential.’ These interactions are being overseen by Andy Leonard in his role as BP’s Vice-President for Cambridge.
Valuing research
BP’s annual spend for 2009 across the University is £3.6 million, of which approximately £1 million is funding technical research and the remainder is principally funding endowments and scholarships.
The company’s main channels of engagement are the BP Institute for Multiphase Flow, established in 2000 with a £22 million endowment from BP, and Judge Business School through the Centre for India and Global Business and the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies. BP has also had long and fruitful collaborations elsewhere in the University, especially with the Bullard Laboratories within the Department of Earth Sciences.
Several areas of applied research activities in Cambridge have brought world-class expertise to bear on practical issues that have reaped immediate benefits for BP, from exploration through to fuels and lubricants. But BP also views fundamental research as strategically important: ‘Although fundamental research can take years from invention to commercialisation, it also has the potential to yield something truly significant,’ said Eyton. ‘The University has a fabulous track record of creating important knowledge and that is one of the reasons we are investing in Cambridge. As a business, we have to stay competitive and invest in areas that we believe will benefit our shareholders.’
Recruiting the best
Recruitment is very much part of the strategic relationship with Cambridge. ‘The people we recruit today could have a profound impact on the company over many decades,’ explained Andy Leonard, ‘so we need to ensure that the highest quality students are exposed to the range of employment opportunities within BP.’ Also of importance, partly from a recruiting perspective, is the large number of scholarship programmes BP runs for research students, mainly in collaboration with the Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas Trusts. This year, BP has made job offers to 20 graduates and 17 interns in Cambridge, as well as partially funding 49 research scholarships.
Recognising opportunities
‘The key to success in strategic relationships is to create situations where there is genuine mutuality,’ said Eyton. ‘We want the relationship with Cambridge to achieve its greatest potential and to progress the strategic aims of the University and BP.’ The company is also keen to support the strengthening of links between universities such as Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Tsinghua University in Beijing, predominantly with regard to finding new forms of low carbon energy and moving towards a more sustainable energy landscape in the world.
‘I am a big believer in investing in places like Cambridge that have a proven record of success,’ explained Eyton. ‘I also think that we have even more to discover in terms of opportunities for productive interactions. I’m delighted to say that we are on this journey.’
For more information about BP, please visit www.bp.com/
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