In January 2007, The Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) was

Figure 1. RPSEA membership. (All figures courtesy of RPSEA)
awarded the contract to manage the “Ultra-deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources Research and Development Program” created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). RPSEA is a non-profit corporation composed of a consortium of premier US-related entities dedicated to increasing America’s supply of energy.

Additional information regarding RPSEA and the role of the EPAct program in maximizing the value of domestic energy sources can be found in the article “Major R&D organization Launched” in the May 2007 issue of E&P.

Participation in RPSEA is open to all organizations resident or incorporated within North America that are actively engaged in the energy industry or in energy-related research and development (R&D). With more than 100 members (Figure 1) RPSEA membership represents a broad cross-section of energy stakeholder viewpoints and talent.

The EPAct legislation includes three RPSEA managed program elements:
• Ultradeepwater architecture and technology;
• Unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resource exploration and production; and
• Technology challenges of small producers.
This article describes RPSEA’s proposed Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum
Figure 2. Technically recoverable unconventional gas resource by geologic basin.
Resources program, which is currently focused on tight gas sands, gas shales and coalbed methane. Details on the other RPSEA program elements can be found in their entirety, including the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s complementary research plan, at: http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/advisorycommittees/
Sec_999_Annual_Plan_-_DraftFINAL.pdf

Unconventional gas R&D program
The goal of the Unconventional Resources program element is to increase the supply of domestic natural gas and other petroleum resources through the development of technologies that reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of exploration and production of these resources while improving safety and minimizing environmental impact. In order to assure a significant impact with limited funding, the initial program will focus on a limited number of potential resources.

The contribution of natural gas to the nation’s energy supply from three specific unconventional resources — gas shales, coal seams and tight sands — has grown significantly during the past 20 years. These resources have been identified by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and others as critical supply sources for the next 20 years. According to the latest estimate by the National Petroleum Council (NPC 2003), the volume of technically recoverable gas from these three resources in the lower 48 states is in excess of 293 Tcf (Figure 2).

Plans for the Unconventional Resources program have been developed through input and
Figure 3. RPSEA Unconventional Gas Program Technology Focus Areas.
information gathered during a number of recent efforts to identify and prioritize the technology challenges to development of unconventional resources. These efforts included: 1) a series of five workshops held in various producing basins by RPSEA during 2003, 2) workshops carried out as part of the NPC 2003 Natural Gas Study, 3) a series of Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored unconventional gas technology road-mapping workshops held during 2005, and 4) 11 forums held by RPSEA during late 2006 and early 2007. Data, information and inputs obtained through these efforts were combined to arrive at a prioritized list of technology challenges that underlie both the objectives of this program and future solicitation topics.

Due to their potential and critical significance, gas shales, tight gas sands and coalbed methane were determined to be the primary unconventional resources to be initially addressed. All three resources are important, but gas shales, the most difficult and least developed, were identified during this process as the top priority. Three categories or types of plays have been defined for the program based on level of current activity.

The three play categories are:
• Existing — Active development drilling and production;
• Emerging — Formations, depth intervals or geographic areas from which there has been limited commercial development activity and very large areas remain undeveloped; and
• Frontier area — Formations, depth intervals or geographic areas from which there has been no prior commercial development.

The relative balance of the program’s focus among these three categories, as well as the priority plays/basins identified within each of the three resource areas, are illustrated in Table 1. The basins noted are representative based on expressed industry interest and not meant to exclude opportunities in other basins within the three resource types.

As indicated in Table 1, the program will carry a weighting toward near- and mid-term results by focusing on existing and emerging plays. R&D activities associated with the near term will have a significant field-based component with supporting analytic work. Methods and techniques developed in this phase will be tested in the field through producer partners. This near-term R&D will be built on recent technology successes in various geographic/geologic areas, advancing these technologies to a higher level and broadly disseminating the results. Near-term projects will focus on field testing, technology dissemination and cost-cutting for all components of well construction and production.

Specific technology focus areas associated with the targeted resources are shown in Figure 3. Advances in these areas will lead to wells that are better located and connected to the reservoir, resulting in fewer overall wells required to produce a given reservoir. Drilling fewer wells not only improves the economics of unconventional gas development, but directly reduces the environmental impact of unconventional gas operations.

For emerging plays, program emphasis will be placed on producer field work in emerging areas. Working models developed through the near-term program will be applied in less developed fields, modified as required and documented to make the technology readily available to the industry. The focus of the mid-term research will be the development of at least one new emerging resource area to the point where a substantial portion of the technical resource becomes economic reserves.

In the long term, the program aims at identification and characterization of two or more
Figure 4. RPSEA unconventional gas field-based research program components.
resource-rich plays or basins with limited current activity. The objective will be to provide information, knowledge and methodologies to spur activity in currently undeveloped and low-activity resources, allowing access to gas that is technically not feasible to drill and produce with current technologies.

An integrated field-based approach
The unconventional gas R&D program will include a strong field-based research component. Actual field test sites will serve as the research laboratory and will bring to the program producer involvement in all stages of the research. It is through the field research that technology dissemination also begins to take root.

The field program (shown in Figure 4) uses two primary research vehicles:
• Producer partner wells (PPW) — These are wells currently being drilled and completed in an unconventional gas area by a producing company. RPSEA will “piggyback” research experiments such as special coring, well logging or testing on top of the normal operations to gather needed research data for the R&D experiments. This type of well provides highly leveraged information valuable to the producer partner and the research program.
• Major field experiment (MFE) — At some point within the research program, the type of data required often becomes “invasive” to the commercial goals of a producer partner well. As these needs accumulate, they form the basis for a research experiment that includes dedicated wells for the research program. The field-based research program anticipates this need and includes plans for dedicated research sites in to-be-selected unconventional gas plays to provide detailed experimental data and a controlled testing platform.

The field-based program will serve to assure integration of research projects into a focused program. All researchers involved in the program will be included in the design of field operations and will use the data within their research efforts. Verification of new procedures and techniques will begin to take place in the field, providing a strong springboard for technology transfer.

Program information
Solicitations for the RPSEA unconventional gas research program are expected to be released in the early fall of 2007, and projects are planned to be underway in early 2008. The unconventional resources program element budget is US $13.9 million per year plus a minimum of either 20% or 50% cost share, dependent on the project stage. Up-to-date information on plans, solicitations, membership, schedules and events can be found on the RPSEA Web site at www.rpsea.org. Researchers, producers/operators and other interested parties are encouraged to begin considering areas of research and potential partnering arrangements for the current round of solicitations and in anticipation of the ongoing release of additional research solicitations as the program evolves. This is the inaugural year for an exciting R&D program targeting US unconventional gas resources.