Strategic Alliance for
Advanced Energy Technologies

The Chevron Energy Technology Company, the part of Chevron responsible for developing and fielding advanced new technologies across the corporation, maintains a network of partnerships to identify new technology opportunities. Chevron anticipates that the following Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) technologies will be further developed, demonstrated, and deployed to the entire energy industry under its Alliance with LANL.

LANL’s INFICOMM technology enables wireless communication in working oil and gas wells to allow data transmission rates up to a million times faster than conventional techniques so that real-time, broadband production data can be obtained spearheaded the Alliance. For the oil industry, methods to communicate down the well have generally been unreliable. Conditions are corrosive and the extreme pressure and high temperatures challenge conventional electronics. The INFICOMM system would also allow production data to be sent from remote wells to a platform without using batteries or other power.

LANL’s Swept Frequency Acoustic Interferometry (SFAI) technology is being used for acoustic sensing and characterization in applications related to fluid flow through a pipeline ranging from determining various factors involved in fluid quality (oil, mud, etc.) and the interaction of the fluid with the pipeline (e.g., depositions) to determining the condition of the pipeline itself. SFAI will enable continuous well-performance measurements and determination of fluid properties as well as composition without the need for physical samples or intruding on the flow stream.

The drill ship Discoverer Deep Seas used LANL technology to drill Tonga, the deepest well ever drilled in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy of Chevron

LANL’s Trapped Annular Pressure (TAP) technology has the potential to save every deep-sea oil well from catastrophic failure resulting in a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars to the oil industry. Deepwater drilling fluids trapped in the annulus around well casings expand in response to high temperatures when wells begin producing. This in turn causes extremely high pressures that can rupture the well casing, destroying a well that may be 30,000 feet deep. TAP solution uses a monomer liquid that combines to form a solid polymer upon exposure to heat. When the monomers are present in drilling fluid, they cause a reduction in volume that eliminates the pressure build up.