Since I have a new day job, I had to resurrect my early morning workouts. I am not a fan, but I will adapt. I’m a geoscientist, after all, and we have to be able to adapt: our science demands it!
Here, I take that adaptability and look at the final piece of our NAWI study: solutions and how geoscientists play a part in them. I also examine a paper on individual-level contributions in our industry. Happy reading!
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Water Innovation Series, Pt 4: Notes on NAWI’s Proposed Solutions
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Catch up fast: Read parts one through three of this series here.
Now that we understand the scope of the problems and goals we’d like to achieve with water use, let’s get to the fun stuff: solutions!
Before we jump in, a few notes:
A hit of pragmatism: NAWI’s list has some lofty goals, but in some ways, it loses practicality points. I’ve touched on some of them below.
They will also need geos: NAWI didn’t give solutions in progress; It gave focus areas for research. I’ve noted areas that would benefit from, or require, geoscience input.
Recall those focus areas: Solutions outlined in NAWI’s report fall under that same acronym from last week: APRIME. Let’s dig in.
NAWI’s Proposed Focus Areas:
Autonomous: Lab measurements are usually required, but utilizing edge to cloud technology, IoT, and low-cost disposable sensors could improve online methods of field measurements.
Where geos can help: Integrating oilfield tech, like SCADA systems, with metadata could improve water chemistry forecasts under variable operating conditions. As folks who often create or run those lab measurements, geoscientists are poised to help bring them online!
Precise: Research is needed to develop and improve scalable high-performance materials for targeted contaminant removal.
Where geos can help: Does the specialty “biogeochemistry” come to mind?
Resilient: NAWI says, “Energy independence of treatment and measurement systems through enablement of onsite power generation (e.g. gas or microturbines, solar, wind, etc.) and storage reduces dependence on outside, and potentially intermittent, sources.”
Yes, but … Increasing treatment systems’ resiliency by moving energy sources closer seems a little like a cup and ball game to me. Source characteristics and required storage is the key here, not distance from the source.
Intensified: This is all about pulling the most salt out of brines with the least amount of effort and environmental impact. Think leveraging ion exchange or reactive membranes that focus on specific minerals.
Where geos can help: Developing integrated geochemical modeling tools that can predict and control fouling and scaling during treatment, transport, and disposal will be big.
Modular: We need to reduce the size and weight of unit processes without compromising efficiency. That means we need to develop treatment systems and manufacturing methods that benefit from economies of scale.
Electrified: NAWI claims bench-scale testing of electrified treatment processes will be central, and we need to create process changes that will lower energy requirements for these processes.
Maybe, but … Increasing the use of electrified processes while decreasing their electricity requirements seems like competing goals. That being said, technology does tend to move forward in ways that allow fewer electrons to produce more work.
Another potential solution: AAPG’s Division of Environmental Geoscience started its Water Resources Management System to tackle this problem. I will highlight that work in the next edition!
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The O&G industry has a reputation for being highly-risk averse and relatively slow adopters of innovation.
A paper by Perrons et al dives into contributors to upstream oil and gas innovation and the dynamics that might influence that reputation.
Breaking it down: Innovation tends to refer to anything “new.” But there are several riffs on what “new” could mean. We’re going to look specifically at:
Exploitation, meaning an incremental improvement to an existing technology.
Exploration, meaning experimentation, risk-taking, and discovery of something completely novel.
What they did: Researchers sent a 67-question survey to 49,370 randomly selected SPE members. 831 surveys contained full responses to almost every question, and this subset was used for the study.
What they found:
Seniority: Higher-level managers were slightly more likely to engage in exploration activities. This is probably because managers have more security and leeway to take risks.
Education: People with graduate degrees were more likely to engage in exploration. In geosciences, a graduate degree often is research based, so we’re trained in how to conduct research to push boundaries.
Location: Country of residency did have an impact on exploitation vs exploration, suggesting cultural or economic barriers might exist. People working in Brazil, China, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Venezuela had lower inclinations toward exploration-like behavior.
In summary: We obviously can’t just hire folks from specific geographies with graduate degrees and put them in higher-level positions. So, what do we do with these results?
Know thyself: We need to know what innovations we want and why, which means having our priorities straight.
Slow is smooth: Some cutting edge technology is truly a game-changer, but we have people’s lives at stake in our daily operations. A certain level of caution is warranted.
Smooth is fast: Geoscientists fall on a spectrum with two end members: those who would still be mapping on light tables (some of you might still be!), and those who are well versed in QGIS. We are a microcosm of the industry, but that dichotomy can be better balanced when communication and respect are key.
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