The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
*Address issues related to induced seismicity as a result of gas production, as well as carbon dioxide storage. *Also, Visiting Professor in Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London.
*Responsibilities included assuring integration across technical disciplines and organizations necessary to execute heater R&D technology development for in-situ upgrading of heavy oil, and oil-shale conversiion, including effective technology selection and maturation processes. *Tasks also include mentoring less experienced staff and acting as a focal point to lead and guide the research development and engineering design of the heater systems and components. *Aso, visiting Professor in Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London.. Highlights - Focal point for self-regulating and formation Joule heating technologies. Crucial input into design and modeling of a formation Joule heating test in a shallow resource. *Summarized all previous development work on the self-regulating heater program for possible future application in oil shale. *Provided crucial insights into the issue of long-term heater MgO electrical insulant integrity *Application of key physics and mathematical skills to address a number of issues of importance to the heater program, such as insulant thermal runaway, determining MgO thermal conductivity and the proper way to determine effective thermal conductivity in a layered medium such as oil shale. Also played a key part in the interpretation of a test of the feasibility of a pressure driven traveling thermocouple in a horizontal heater well.
*Managed one Full-Time Employee (FTE), working on heater reliability, and one 16-month intern working on multiphase metering for heavy oil. *Liaison role between the thermal modeling and heater teams within Unconventional Oil. *Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. Highlights - My FTE and introduced analytical and numerical techniques for optimizing the thickness and dielectric properties of screens used to reduce the maximum electric field strength in the heater insulant for a given applied voltage, thus increasing the safety factor for electrical breakdown. *Taught the heater component of the Unconventional Oil 180 course piloted in 2009.
*Project lead for the Circulating Molten Salt emerging concept until end February 2008. *Project lead for Formation Joule heating concept for accelerated in-situ mobility enhancement (March 2008-March 2009). *Visiting Professor in Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. Highlights - Finalized the selection of the salt while lead. CMS is now in the mainstream heater program. *Coordinated the scoping stage of the in-situ mobility project leading to pre-screen and formulated IP-secured Formation Joule electrode designs.
*R&D Focal Point for Electric Heaters in SURE (Now Unconventional Technologies). *Coordinator of European Union sponsored project "Improved Radiation Transport Modelling for Borehole Applications". *Visiting Professor in Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. Highlights - Developed a suite of predictive tools for the power output of self-regulating electric heaters. These have been implemented in design optimization. *Completed a comprehensive study of dielectric breakdown in mineral insulated cables, another type of heater being considered for use in unconventional oil recovery. The results have been implemented in the current suite of MI cable designs. *Carried out extensive eddy current modeling work, which has led to redesign of overburden sections and wellheads. *Demonstrated that apparently off-spec insulators destined for the Viking unconventional oil recovery pilot were, in fact, fit for purpose, thus avoiding a delay in the project start-up. *European Union sponsored project was concluded successfully, on budget. *At Imperial, have delivered seminar series on a wide range of topics. Some of the work was implemented in Unconventional Oil. *Authored or co-authored a large number of patent publications.