BP Ventures, the corporate venture division of BP Plc (NYSE: BP) and Silicon Microgravity Ltd. (SMG), have formed an advisory board to explore future cooperation around borehole microgravity logging technology for use in oil and gas exploration, SMG said in a news release.

The advisory board is comprised of BP’s Luis Alcoser and Robin Wye along with Paul Vickery and Francis Neill, both from SMG.

A spinout of the University of Cambridge, SMG developed novel sensor technology that is used by oil companies to enhance oil recovery.

“We believe our new proprietary, patented borehole microgravity logging technology, based on a unique approach, will present a disruptive approach to the measurement of water flood fronts in major conventional reservoirs,” SMG CEO Paul Vickery said in a news release. The technology could help operators:

  • Improve sweep efficiency and recovery through better EOR management such as flood front prediction, coning and sanding risk;
  • Better thin bed detection in resource assessment; and
  • Enable superior bypassed pay identification, he added.

BP Ventures sees “the SMG borehole gravity technology as a key enabling technology with potential applications across the BP global portfolio,” added Alcoser. “The BP support is intended to enable SMG to develop a greater understanding of operator requirements and also the ability to deploy the technology in a range of applications.”