The Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) is arguably an example of the U.S. government getting it right when it comes to R&D funding for the oil and gas industry. The program was founded after the passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005 to lead research in ultradeepwater (UDW) and unconventional technology development as well as aiding small producers. The project was to last 10 years and was given $375 million to fund the research.

A decade later, RPSEA can boast numerous projects that have been completed and new technologies that have been developed. But there are still plenty of projects in the hopper, and as of September 2014, there is no more federal funding for RPSEA. What’s a partnership to do?

“We were instructed by my board to stretch this so it lasts until the end of the program,” said James Pappas, acting RPSEA president. “They were concerned that if we turned all of the project management over to the federal government, we would lose the industry support for the existing 30-plus projects that are still going on. Essentially the lifeblood of this program is the involvement we have throughout the projects themselves.”

Hanging on

With important projects in the balance, RPSEA staff determined that they had to find a way to survive until more funding might become available (which is at least six months from becoming a possibility). The organization has been restructured, and some staff has been let go. Other responsibilities have been turned over to the National Energy Technology Laboratory. But there’s no talk of locking the doors and turning out the lights.

“The technical team is going to stay intact, for the most part,” Pappas said. “We’re going to follow the projects and continue to put the meetings together.”

And help also has been offered by the industry that is benefiting from the technological advances. Pappas said that RPSEA was contacted about 18 months ago by companies that were involved in a specific project. “They said they would like to hire us to put together a joint industry project [JIP] together to carry the project all the way to commercialization,” he said. “We put together a JIP that’s going to get started in three or four months.”

This set the stage for the next phase of RPSEA—marketing the ongoing projects to the industry to encourage additional JIPs. Industry participants provide the funding, and RPSEA provides the oversight and administration. “We looked at a few existing projects and also some of the projects that we wanted to do but couldn’t when they cut our funding,” he said. “We’ve gone back to the blackboard and regenerated those as JIPs, and we’re marketing them right now.”

On the UDW side, which is Pappas’ responsibility, are several exciting technology projects that have piqued industry interest. One of these is the Paulssen project, which has ramifications for both onshore and offshore development. The project involves a vertical seismic profiling (VSP) tool that was originally intended as a seismic-while-drilling tool but is showing promise in microseismic fracture monitoring as well. Pappas said the tool could be run outside casing or tubing to provide a 3-D microseismic picture. “If we can get something in the hole at the same time as we take measurements from the surface, we can visualize a 3-D picture, especially in a horizontal well,” he said. “We could tie all of it together and give a much better indication of where the fracturing is actually taking place.”

Another project involves a tool that could be placed over a BOP as a “last resort,” able to cut anything to 18 in. and seal the well.

A third project entails finding an alternative to an airgun source for offshore seismic surveys. This technique, called a marine vibrator, would act similar to a land vibroseis truck, eliminating the need for the loud surface source that has become an environmental hot-button issue due to the potential effect on marine mammals. Pappas said that other techniques might be evaluated as well.

“We know that if we have a tool that seems to work, we can save time by having an independent group evaluate the effect on mammals while we’re testing it offshore,” he said.

Onshore the potential project list is huge. Kent Perry, vice president of onshore programs, said his group received more than 100 research proposals with a price tag of more than $200 million. That list was reviewed and shortened with the help of industry reviewers and advisers.

“We were about to place the contracts when the program budget was cut by the Murray-Ryan budget bill,” Perry said. “What we are now attempting to do is fund the best set of projects with industry funding via a JIP.”

While he couldn’t go into specifics on the JIPs that are being marketed, he said many of them fall into “areas of current environmental concern” for shale development, including methane emissions, induced seismicity, water management, wellbore integrity and impact on shallow freshwater aquifers.

Cherry-picking

While the JIP route shows great potential for maintaining and reviving some of these projects, Pappas said his team has to be careful not to take on too much. “There’s only so much we can do,” he said. “If we’re too successful, we don’t have the staff to do it right now.”

He’s also concerned about the potential of competing with current RPSEA members like the Gas Technology Institute, the Southwest Research Institute and several universities. “We don’t want to compete with them,” he said. “We’ll lose our members if we do. We need to find the right niche to keep everyone happy.”

And he hopes this will be a short-term problem. There is a bill in Congress to resurrect the program, and if the bill passes, RPSEA will bid for the contract. “Assuming we get it, we’d be back in business with a large-scale $300 million to $500 million program,” he said.