American Oil and Gas Reporter - PBIOS 2016 Official Program Guide - 129

Current research focuses on polymeric
hollow fiber membranes for treating produced water utilizing a two-stage nanofiltration process.
The module containing these membranes is compact and portable, uses little
energy, and can be retrofitted easily at
the end of a produced water production
facility. The water treatment capacity depends directly on the quantity of hollow
fibers used.
The Reservoir Evaluation and Advanced Computational Technologies Group
is led by me (geophysics). This group
focuses on developing and applying solutions to problems at many scales using
geological, geophysical, and engineering
data to aid in understanding and simulating
reservoir responses to various production
scenarios, including secondary and tertiary
processes.
Recent work has involved simulating
the response of short-radius laterals for
recompletions in mature wells, history
matching and predicting water and CO2
flood performance, and acid gas disposal
and storage scenarios.
The Reservoir Sweep Improvement
Group is led by Randall Seright (chemical
engineering). It develops methods to prevent fluid channeling through reservoirs,
and ways to reduce excess water and gas
production during oil recovery, especially
polymer flooding and gel treatments (or
conformance improvement/water shutoff treatments).
PRRC Finances
Funding for the PRRC comes from a
variety of sources, including a base budget
from the state of New Mexico. In 2016,
that budget was $1,994,500 of which
$784,594 was used as matching funds on
federally funded research projects.
PRRC also performs work for other
state agencies ($39,266 in 2016), and
has maintained a high level of support
$6,216,276 Fiscal Year 2016

9%
32%

Federal

ROBERT S.
BALCH

Robert S. Balch is director of the
Petroleum Recovery Research Center
located on the campus of the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where he also holds adjunct
professor positions in petroleum engineering and geophysics, and has
been research adviser to more than
40 graduate students. During his 18
years at PRRC, Balch has been principal investigator on a range of enhanced oil recovery projects focused
on developing and applying solutions
at many scales using geological, geophysical, and engineering data. These
include the Southwest Partnerships
Phase III demonstration project where
1 million metric tons of anthropogenic
carbon dioxide is being injected for
combined storage and enhanced oil
recovery in a North Texas waterflood.
Balch has held an appointment as an
oil conservation commissioner for the
state of New Mexico since June 2011.

Industry

This pie chart shows the distribution of
the Petroleum Recovery Research Center's ﬁscal 2016 funding.

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Economic Boom

59%

State

from federally funded projects for the
Department of Energy, Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America,
and the Department of the Interior's
Bureau of Land Management. In fiscal
year 2016, federal expenditures by the
PRRC were $3,622,389.
PRRC also had $560,121 in funding
from industry-sponsored research and
consortiums in which it participated.
Historically, PRRC's funding profile
has focused on the U.S. DOE, and more
recently, RPSEA, in large grants or contracts. PRRC also has had success in
bringing funds from industry, often to
perform smaller scale studies of much
shorter duration.
r

Midland, Tx., tops the list of U.S.
cities with the highest percentage of
upper-income families. Thanks to the
oil and gas sector, 37 percent of Midland residents are in the upper-income category, according to a study
by Pew Research Center.

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OCTOBER PBIOS 2016 129

American Oil and Gas Reporter - PBIOS 2016 Official Program Guide

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