Posted on 05/31/2026 6:39:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) are taking significant steps that can help boost production of oil and natural gas that can be recovered from unconventional formations.
The method focuses on recovering these additional resources in shale and other tight reservoirs that have already produced hydrocarbons through hydraulic fracturing in primary recovery operations but still contain large amounts of oil and gas trapped within rocks.
In unconventional formations, only a small percentage of hydrocarbons in place are typically extracted. While the new research could help ensure affordable, reliable, and secure energy for the United States.
Primary recovery from hydraulic fracturing
“Primary recovery from hydraulic fracturing in these unconventional formations is typically between 3% and 10% of oil in place and 5% to 30% of natural gas in place,” said NETL researcher Angela Goodman, a world-renowned expert in geological systems.
“Our task involves finding safe and cost-effective strategies to recover far greater percentages of the oil and gas left behind in those reservoirs.”
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy provides valuable assistance
The research team claims that the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides valuable assistance.
The NETL team is using NMR technology to quantify fluids in subsurface cores by determining the porosity and pore size distribution for pores as small as 1 nanometer. NMR can also identify the type of fluid in the core by differentiating fluids of different viscosities, such as water, hydrogen, heavy oil, light oil, and natural gas, and characterize a core’s wetting properties to determine whether the rock will preferentially take up water, oil, natural gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) to promote oil and gas recovery, according to a press release.
“We begin with saturating shale cores in hydrocarbon oil. Hydrogen atoms are abundant in the hydrocarbon-soaked cores. When the rock core is placed in the NMR unit’s magnetic field, the hydrogen nuclei align themselves with the field,” said NETL researcher Matthew Grindle.
Researchers revealed that a radiofrequency pulse is then applied, briefly knocking the nuclei out of alignment. Once the pulse is switched off, the protons slowly return to their magnetically aligned state in a process known as “relaxation.”
NMR relaxation times provide information about in-situ porosity (percentage of void space within a rock indicating how much water, oil, or gas it can hold), pore size distribution (size of pores within a rock), permeability (a measure of how easily fluids can flow through the interconnected pore spaces within the rock), and fluid saturation of the rock, as per the release.
Researchers also revealed that the NMR unit has the capability to analyze rock cores while in a pressure vessel to simulate extreme pressures of up to 10,000 psi and temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius, which are found in the subsurface, and study how fluids flow through rock cores under these conditions.
“Such analyses enable the measurement of initial multiphase fluid saturation (water, hydrocarbons, etc.) and monitor fluid saturation changes throughout injection of new fluid such as CO2, natural gas, water, and surfactants intended to initiate oil recovery” said NETL researcher Lauren Burrows.
The NMR technology will be used to conduct experiments in which the oil-saturated rock core is held at high pressure and injected with natural gas, water, surfactant, or CO2 to complete a technique known as “huff-and-puff.”
During these huff-and-puff experiments, digital scans are generated to create a 3D map of the distribution of fluids in the rock and show how the injected fluid moves the oil and water throughout the rock pores, including fluid in nanopores that are thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, according to the press release.
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Will it work on the uinta basin formation that holds two trillion bbls of oil
It should work anywhere..............
This just sounds like someone trying to try revive use of a crappy log called the nuclear magnetic resonance. It has faded into obscurity.
A funny aside - to run an NMR log, it had to be pulled very slowly. Like 20 per minute or so. I have seen birds land on the wireline as we were logging.
>> The research team claims that the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides valuable assistance.
Oil companies should advertise it as “Nuclear Assisted Fracking” so’s we can watch progressive enviroweenies’ heads explode.
20’ per minute.
All of this science! I’m confused.
The apparent greed of oil companies is the best argument for electric cars.
Look at gasoline prices right now. Is there an actual shortage? No. There never was. No oil company has lost a dime in profits. They’ll let the country go to Hell first.
Look at gasoline prices right now.
Seeing this on Free Republic is very cool. They are using my gear to hit that 10,000 psi mark.
I used to calibrate pressure gages in a previous life. When I got up past 5000 psi I’d get nervous........
Peak oil - always a myth, blown up over and over. Abiotic oil is being formed all the time, in the mysterious Mohorovicic Discontinuity, or “Moho,” which is the boundary between the crust and the mantle. In this hellish boundary layer, millions of side reactions are occurring all the time, where carbon dioxide is a superfluid liquid that is also a reagent in the constantly reversing reactions taking place.
And you thought petroleum was some kind of dinosaur soup.
What we really need is more refineries!
I never thought that was the case.
There never could have been enough plant and animal mass in existence to account for all the petroleum.
I figured that way deep down in the earth, methane gas from the beginning of the solar system, was being compressed and heated to enormous temps and pressures and being liquified into petroleum.
After all, the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus and their moons are all full of methane and ammonia.....................
“The deepest humans have ever drilled into the Earth’s crust is 12.262 kilometres (40,230 feet) at the Kola Superdeep Borehole on the Kola peninsula of Russia. This drilling took 20 years to complete and is the deepest penetration of the Earth’s solid surface. The crust is the only layer of the Earth that humans have encountered, and it ranges from 3 to 40-plus miles thick. The Earth’s geothermal gradient means that the temperature increases by about 25 degrees Celsius for every kilometre drilled. This makes drilling deeper more challenging, and the pressure within the mantle may be far beyond the strength of any material known today.”
Source: https://quartzmountain.org/article/how-deep-have-we-travelled-into-the-crust
Space may or may not be “the final frontier”, but the fact is we have barely scratched the surface (pun intended) on the crust of our home planet...
A couple of years back a team of geologists in UK wanted to drill through the mantle.................
1268 meters below the seafloor –
You rock, sir!
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