Robert Downey has over 30 years of experience in upstream oil and gas and energy technology development. Prior to Shale Ingenuity, he held numerous executive and technical professional positions at Amoco, Encana, Synthetic Genomics, Ciris Energy and Gunnison Energy.
He has been awarded several patents in coal bioconversion, reservoir simulation modeling, reservoir engineering and well drilling and completions. Mr. Downey earned a BS degree in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.
In this exclusive interview, Downey explains how Enhanced Oil Recovery is creating new opportunities in oil and gas development.
According to Downey, Texas is showing some positive activity while regulations and politics are preventing states like Colorado and North Dakota from oil and gas production.
Shale Ingenuity has invented and developed two innovative shale oil EOR methods, named SuperEOR and UltraEOR. They involve the injection of a liquid solvent of a specified composition into the shale oil reservoir, at a high rate and for a short injection period (a few days), followed by flowback to a specific minimum wellbore pressure.
The solvent is recovered in equipment at the surface and reinjected, thereby reducing costs. Gas produced with the crude oil continues to flow to the midstream facility for NGL recovery. Solvent recovery is highly efficient and low-cost. UltraEOR adds a step at the start of the EOR process that generates a complex fracture network around the wellbore lateral, thereby increasing the contact of the solvent with the shale rock matrix.
Specific composition, or “tuned” liquid solvents recover oil in a manner significantly different from natural gas or CO2. The solvent has a very low solubility or miscibility pressure; it immediately reduces the interfacial tension between the crude oil and rock matrix; it reduces the oil viscosity; it increases the relative permeability to oil; it adds solution gas pressure to the crude oil and becomes a gas when the pressure is reduced, expanding and driving the oil through the shale pores; and also benefits from other forces, such as advective and molecular-diffusion flux. As a result, it is very effective at recovering oil from the shale oil matrix, and high-pressure injection is not required.
The interview also dives into which shale plays are currently showing results and which ones they are looking at in the future.
Downey is scheduled to speak at the 24th Annual Energy Exposition in Las Vegas the week of the 2024 Super Bowl.
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