Tuesday, 17 June, 2025 / Edition 63

Innovations can come from anywhere, but generally, they come from the spaces and people who need them most. That means new tech can be fueled by majors with funds to spend, or the little guy whose project cannot move forward without creating something brand new. Either way... 🎶Where there is a problem, yo, innovation will solve it… Ice, Ice, Baby 🎶

Today, we will look at examples of both sources of new ideas and tech: The big guys (Chevron and Halliburton’s new intelligent fracturing innovations) and the little guys (students and young professionals with new ideas for sustainable energy innovation). The later will be brought to you by AAPG’s Digital Managing Editor, Kelsey Kosh.

Let’s go!

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

Intelligent Fracturing Advances

Junrong/Shutterstock.com

Two of the biggest names in the industry, Chevron and Halliburton, are coming together to advance hydraulic fracturing.

What is intelligent fracturing? In short, it’s automating the fracturing process. Here’s how it works compared to traditional methods.

The typical fracturing process: When a fracturing job is underway….

1. Instruments downhole spit out an endless stream of data, compiled into charts and graphs, to let engineers know how the project is progressing.

2. Based on the data, engineers can make snap decisions about aspects of the project including pump rates, fluid and chemical volumes, and the amount of sand to pump during each stage.

The goal is to pump as much of the planned job as possible without screening out or otherwise losing the stage.

Pain points: The work is stressful, tiring, and can be fraught with mistakes and inconsistencies due to various operator choices and/or outside conditions.

Automating the fracturing process:

1. First, innovators in the field hooked up automated switches and other “simple” processes to computers. They then gave these switches parameters around which to actuate, then automated.

2. More recently, leaders have implemented AI and other analyses to learn about which conditions require which actions.

3. Now, the two are coming together to enable closed-loop, feedback-driven completions right here in Colorado. The process uses subsurface feedback to help automate stage execution and optimize delivery of energy into the wellbore without relying on human intervention.

What’s new: Halliburton and Chevron are deploying a combination of technologies from the wellsite to the cloud.

• The basic formula for automation is made up of two things: sensors and something capable of acting on the information provided by those sensors.

• Halliburton’s ZEUS IQ intelligent fracturing platform uses that formula in the form of their Sensori monitoring platform, and their OCTIV digital fracturing service.

  • The Sensori platform acquires and processes the downhole data—near the well and further afield.

  • The OCTIV digital fracturing service allows for autonomous job control, a closed-loop and fully automated system, a portal for users to remotely connect to real-time data, and intelligent valve control that removes workers from dangerous red zones.

• The system is designed to incorporate customer subsurface knowledge—which is Chevron in this case—by building it into an algorithm that allows customers to leverage their unique expertise within their decision making.

Where are the geos: “Subsurface knowledge” is a key phrase that caught my attention because it might as well have said, “knowledge of the rocks and reservoir,” which is driven by us geoscientists.

Our knowledge is being built directly into this tech to help make real-time automated decisions that improve safety, reliability, and efficiency.

What’s next: Where the big guys go, others will follow!

• Keep your ears peeled for opportunities to help train these models, because as (hopefully) the industry has learned with maps: You can’t simply pull public subsurface data and directly input it into a training set for an AI model.

• The quality of public data is too low. Experts are required to go over the data, clean it up, and augment it before it even touches a training set or is used to build a model.

Go deeper: For the World Oil release about the tech, look here.

A message from AAPG Academy and the Energy Minerals Division

Join AAPG Academy and AAPG's Energy Minerals Division (EMD) today at 9am CDT as we explore the emerging trends and developments that are making a difference in the quest for critical minerals and rare earth elements.

Our conversation will be led by two expert speakers, Ashley Douds and Aaron Ball, who are the president and president-elect of AAPG's Energy Minerals Division, respectively.

Douds will begin by examining recent trends in energy minerals with a focus on the state of Indiana and the Appalachian Basin. She will be followed by Ball, who will take an even closer look, analyzing brines with laser-induced break spectroscopy and how they can be used to predict the presence of light and heavy elements.

Sustainable Development in Energy Competition To Announce Winners Thursday

Krungchingpixs/Shutterstock.com

Each year, AAPG hosts the Sustainable Development in Energy Competition, in which students and young professionals develop and pitch innovative projects that could have a positive impact within the energy space in countries around the world. 

Driving the news: This Thursday, June 19, the 2025 competition winner will be announced via Zoom and recognized online and on AAPG’s Linkedin.

Background:

• The goal of the competition is to “generate practical and achievable ideas that can be implemented to promote science and technology relevant to energy issues with a positive social, environmental, and economic impact,” according to the event site … sounds like encouraging energy innovation to me!

• The students and young professionals can work in teams or individually. Each applicant must submit a proposal, and from these proposals, the top ten (or this year nine) are chosen as finalists.

• The finalists then spend 12 weeks developing their ideas, perfecting their pitches, and working with coaches and industry partners in the Venture Lab, a cohort-based program that helps finalists make their projects commercially scalable. This year’s Venture Lab is operated by Pro Ally.

• Last Thursday, the top nine finalists pitched their ideas before an esteemed judging panel.

2025 finalist projects include ideas around:

• Converting cacao and coffee waste in rural Colombia into bioenergy

• A portable mini-hydro solution for off-grid geotourism areas

• Using eggshells to help make mining more sustainable

• Developing a modular, mobile digester for biomethane and biofertilizer generation

• Much more! To read the full list of finalists and learn about their project, look here.

Prizes: The winner will receive $5,000 to fund and implement their project.

Go deeper: Read more about the competition here and stay tuned next week for a closer look at the winning innovative project.

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✉️ To get in touch with Sarah or suggest a topic for Enspired, send an email to editorial@aapg.org.