Category: Uncategorized

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Aboard the Norseman II – Finally!

By Madie Jones (Master’s student, SMU)

Today is our 6th day in Alaska and I can happily say that we have FINALLY made it safely onto the Norseman II. After the weather in Wainwright failed to clear up enough for a flight out of Anchorage….three days in a row…we decided to change up the plans a bit and board out of Prudhoe Bay instead.  Friday and Saturday morning started off with disappointing weather updates from Wainwright: low visibility caused by fog and seas too rough for a crew change.

We got to know Anchorage pretty well by our 5th day, eating out at restaurants for pretty much every meal and exploring downtown with the truck that our travel coordinators let us borrow.  Side note, if anyone ever visits Anchorage let me know and I’ll give ya some great food recommendations.  On Saturday, Matt, Ben and I decided to go on another hike.  We chose an 8.7 mile hike down and back to Wolverine Peak at an elevation of about 4200 ft.  It took us 5 hours, but the views from the top were incredible and definitely worth the struggle it took to get up there.

This morning we woke up bright and early to fly to Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay. Once we landed we were driven to the port to get water-taxied out to the Norseman II, which was about 3 miles offshore.  The drive through Deadhorse was eerie – this is such a remote, strange part of the world.  I’ll explain Deadhorse by quoting our driver, Roger, who said: “The best way to describe Deadhorse is by what it isn’t.  No one gets their mail here, there are no kids, no pets, no streetlights.  It’s not a city, it’s just a place.”  We drove by camps built for oil and gas workers who live here on and off for 2 weeks at a time.  Pipelines and huge abandoned rigs cover ground for as far as the eye can see.

The boat ride out to our ship and the boat transfer/crew change went down without a hitch and now we’re here working on the Norseman II for the next 10 days!  We spent the rest of the day setting up the heat flow probe and chirp equipment, meeting the crew and getting adjusted to life at sea.  Now that most of the equipment appears to be ready to go, we have a 12-hour steam to our first data collection site.  Here are some pictures of us getting equipment set up, which took all day and a lot of patience on everyone’s part.  But it’s also really fun and exciting because we’re finally doing the cool part!  This is, after all, the whole reason we’re here.

So that’s it!  We’re off to a great start aboard the Norseman II and we’re all looking forward to our first heat flow probe deployment in 12 hours.  You can follow our voyage on the Norseman II by clicking here.  More updates to come, but for now we’re all going to rest up for a big day of data collection and new challenges.

 

Thursday September 8, 2016

Hello from Flattop Mountain in Anchorage, Alaska!

 By Madie Jones (Master’s student, SMU)

We are on day 3 of our Arctic research journey to collect heat flow and chirp seismic data in the Beaufort Sea. Here are the scientists (minus me): Dr. Matt Hornbach (SMU), Dr. Rob Harris (OSU), Casey Brokaw (Master’s student, SMU) and Dr. Ben Phrampus (Postdoc, OSU and SMU Alum).

We’re currently hanging out in Anchorage, AK until the weather and seas calm down a bit at our dock site in Wainwright, AK. The flight to Wainwright was supposed to take place this morning but fog, wind and rough seas expected to last through tomorrow have postponed the last leg of our trip an extra day.

So… what do you do when you can’t board your ship? Hike! We hiked up Flattop Mountain taking in the sights of Cook Inlet and enjoying the cool weather, which has been a nice break from the long and very hot Texas summer.

We are excited and anxious to board the Norseman II tomorrow for 10 full days at sea. Hoping for calmer, clearer weather and for a smooth transition onto the boat. You can track the Norseman II here:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=08qnDNqlKQsOotXfD1ogoL3CreMqmpizz

More updates to come… Wish us luck!

Maria Richards and Christine Ferguson of the SMU Geothermal Laboratory discuss the Lab’s founding, projects including the Geothermal Map of North America and National Geothermal Data System, and the Labs international energy conferences.

See Maria and Christine at the 2016 SMU Power Plays conference.

Jeff Dye and Dexter Jacobs, founders of the startup company LoCap Energy, attended the 2015 SMU Power Plays conference.  In this video they highlight their activities since attending the conference.

Jeff and Dexter will be presenting an update LoCap Energy’s energy storage and efficiency solutions at the 2016 SMU Power Plays conference.

Miguel Benitez Torreblanca was part of a group of students from Grupo iiDEA at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) that attended the 2015 SMU Power Plays conference.  Miguel discusses the group’s experiences in this video.

See Miguel present an update on Grupo iiDEA research at the 2016 SMU Power Plays conference.

Chad Augustine, Geothermal Energy Engineer/Analyst with National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (NREL) has broken the code that explains the core differences between O&G and geothermal drilling.  The graphic below identifies the major misconceptions that cloud and confuse both sides from collaborating more than they currently do.

Although the goals of the petroleum and geothermal industry are the same – to extract energy from the subsurface – there are major differences that can make it difficult for them to communicate and collaborate. Often it seems like the industries are speaking two different languages. This is most true when the industries attempt to talk about temperatures and flow rates. What is “hot” in the petroleum industry is low temperature for geothermal, and a “high flow rate” from a petroleum well could be an order of magnitude less than what is needed for commercial geothermal energy production. A key to collaboration and to developing geothermal projects in petroleum settings is getting both sides to “speak the same language” when evaluating prospects and discussing the requirements for commercial electricity generation. After this, many of the same technologies and expertise used by the petroleum industry to produce oil and gas could be used to produce water for geothermal electricity generation.

Chad will be presenting this concept and more at the SMU Power Plays Conference on April 25-26^th in Dallas, Texas. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this in person.  Register today!

In North Dakota, the hunt for more oil has produced surplus gas.  Natural gas is burned off, or ‘flared’ where there are no – or overloaded – pipelines.  As of 2014, there were nearly 11,000 producing wells in North Dakota, with an alarming amount of flaring going on.  Hess Corporation among many developers in the Bakken, faced strict regulations to reduce emissions by limiting the flaring of excess gas from their project sites.

Hess along with Gulf Coast Green Energy, Houston Advanced Research Center and Environmentally Friendly Drilling have worked together on a solution to capture the excess flared gas and generate electricity with it.  To do so, a Power+ generator was installed – and studies have shown that emissions are lowered when the Power+ generator is online.

For more information – you can watch this video

and attend SMU’s Power Plays Conference, April 25 -26, 2016 for a full update of the project success.

Click here to register!

Source and project leads:

• Loy Sneary – Gulf Coast Green Energy
• Bernard Groce – Hess Corporation
• Satish Ravindran – HARC

There is a quite the story being written today about the ways geothermal energy can help transition an existing oil and gas field into an electricity-generating system. SMU has been leading the research, development and promotion of such a concept for over two decades.

The following is a summarized timeline, featuring historical developments that have helped advance geothermal proof of concepts within O&G fields throughout the US.

1975: Texas Geothermal Resources Act written

1989: First Geopressure power plant in the US, Brazoria County, TX

1992: SMU completes first Geothermal Map of North America

2004: SMU publishes first full-coverage Geothermal Map of North America

2005: UTC builds prototype of PureCycle® (now under PWPS)

2005: Steve Bergman with SMU “discover” RMOTC’s high fluid flow

2006: Chena Hot Springs Resort, Alaska develops geothermal power (500 kw)

2006: 1st SMU Geothermal Conference on Utilizing Oil & Gas Fields

2008: ORMAT Technologies, Inc. installs binary unit at Rocky Mtn Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC), WY

2008: ElectraTherm, Inc. demonstrates Green Machine on SMU Campus

2009: Texas H.B. 4433 Hydrocarbon Tax Exemption from Severance Oil/Gas Tax for Geothermal Wells

2009: RPSEA.org awards project to Gulf Coast Green Energy and Denbury Resources Inc. in central MS

2009: DOE Geothermal Technologies Program funds projects in ND, TX, LA

2010: Oregon Institute of Technology powers-up with PWPS PureCycle®

2010: DOE Geothermal Low-Temperature “Road Mapping” plan established

2011: North Dakota research compares the current binary technologies for oil field settings and presents at SMU Geothermal Conference

2012: China producing 400 kW electricity from Huabei Oilfield

2013: National Geothermal Database System includes all of Texas RRC O/G data for geothermal projects

2016: Continental Resources, Inc. produce 250 kW of power from waterflood injection using Access Energy Thermapower ORC near Marmarth, ND.