Offshore oil and gas development in harmony with environment
—Introduction of classes and research in university
2015 Volume 80 Issue 6 Pages 453-464
Details
2015 Volume 80 Issue 6 Pages 453-464
In the department of resources and environmental engineering of Waseda University, we are performing several classes and research work dealing with oil/gas exploration and development. Although it is difficult to conduct research work targeting the offshore oil/gas development in the university because of its giant scale, we are striving to give lectures on the fundamentals of the technologies applied to offshore oil/gas development taking environmental protection into consideration. This paper introduces the classes and research work for offshore oil/gas development and environmental issues conducted mainly in Waseda University.
About 20 classes deal with the topics related to oil/gas development in the undergraduate and graduate courses. Lectures on offshore oil/gas development are given in three of these classes including one in the international course, where the history of offshore development, offshore production systems including offshore platforms, case studies and environmental protection are explained. On the other hand, about 30 classes are provided for studying environmental issues. In one of these classes, environmentally friendly oil/gas development is introduced from the viewpoints of environmental impact aspects, environmental protection measures and HSE requirements in each project stage.
As for the research related to the environmental protection using petroleum engineering technologies, two programs are now being developed. One is a prototype numerical simulator predicting the bio-remediation of oil contamination in underground water. In this simulator, various reactions induced by microbes such as oil consumption associated with growth/decay of microbes, adsorption of microbes on rock surface and ionization are predicted. The other program is aiming at the optimization of the well locations and CO2 injection rate so that the economics can be maximized in a CCS-EOR project, taking account of oil increment by CO2 injection and CO2 tax credit by storing CO2 in a reservoir.
