Couch Oil and Gas

Couch Oil and Gas Brings you Advanced Energy Exploration

As world demand for oil and natural gas continues to grow, science is providing new methods and perfecting older ways of finding remaining hydrocarbon deposits in regions throughout the world.  The United States still leads the world as the biggest consumer of oil and natural gas, but as emerging countries industrialize, the demand will continue to grow, even as we search for alternatives to fossil fuels.  Since these fuels can be sold at a higher price, there are increased monies available to have another look at fields that may have been considered “played out”.  American producers are looking in their own back yards and are putting to work more sophisticated methods using recently developed digital, optical and audio tools and more advanced computers.

Advances in technology are providing new and exciting techniques for detecting oil and natural gas deposits below the surface of the earth.  These emerging methods are being used in areas where further exploration might have been too expensive to pursue in the past.  Hydrocarbon deposits exist in great quantity, trapped in small pockets in layers of rock underground, very commonly in sandstone.  These openings in rock and sand can be compared to pores in the skin.  Explorers are looking for formations of this kind that are layered in strata where there is potential to extract oil or natural gas.  This type of advancement is particularly encouraging for companies exploring sites in the large U.S. oil fields in the western part of the country.

One method used to find these deposits is seismic exploration, which employs sound waves. Layered on the seismic method is the related method called seismoelectical signals. This technique involves the conversion of seismic waves to electromagnetic energy at interfaces or at the transition points between dry and wet material underground. The movement of fluid relative to solid particles at the interface generates electrical signals that are sent to the surface, signaling detected deposits.  This transmission is sent via a dipole that is set up at the intersection of the sound wave and the interface.  The dipole conducts an electromagnetic wave to receptors on the ground above.

Seismoelectric techniques promise to allow more precise readings.  They can help map areas where the strata are thinner.  They detect to a more precise degree the properties of fluid deposits underground.  They are also valuable in predicting fracturing or instability in the rock formation and in mapping spatial relations within the strata.

One of the drawbacks to the use of the technology is the increased sensitivity to ambient noise which must be removed before the data is interpreted.  The greatest source of these ambient “harmonies” is power lines.  Seismoelectical signals are also slower to arrive and more repeated tests are needed to verify data.

Seismoelectrical testing is still being perfected and is not yet as widely used as other methods.  Work does continue on perfecting this technique and many other cutting edge technologies that can give producers another chance at reclaiming fossil fuels that have been inaccessible.