WellDog has announced that it has established a new carbon services division that is dedicated to applying the company’s suite of award winning, cost-effective downhole products and services to ensuring carbon dioxide can be sequestered safely and efficiently in geological formations. The company’s product portfolio includes the world’s only technical service capable of practical, direct measurement of carbon dioxide or methane injected in underground depleted oil and gas and saline formations.
“We are receiving increased interest in using our downhole reservoir characterization and monitoring technologies to plan, monitor, and audit long-term carbon sequestration efforts in a variety of environments,” said James Walker, COO of WellDog. “By establishing a division that is focused on this important need, we will be better able to help customers understand how to use these products and services to execute successful sequestration projects and to ensure long-term stability of sequestered carbon.”
Since 1999, WellDog has provided a range of downhole reservoir characterization and monitoring products and services to help oil, gas and mining operators increase environmental and economic sustainability. Some of those products and services include measurement of naturally occurring carbon dioxide using the company’s proprietary reservoir Raman spectroscopy technology.
The company simultaneously announced today a partnership with the University of Queensland, funded by a grant from the Australian National Low Emissions Coal Research & Development, to expand application of WellDog’s technology to track trace gases that may be sequestered alongside carbon dioxide. The one-year ANLEC grant, which started in October, supports using WellDog’s Raman technology to establish the key sensor signatures that result from trace gas reactions with formation geology.
“We are pleased to see our long-standing partnership with UQ result in this exciting project,” said Quentin Morgan, CTO of WellDog. “We are hopeful that it will increase our understanding of how geological formations respond to carbon sequestration and enhance our ability to sequester carbon dioxide in those formations over the long term.”
In 2010, the company demonstrated how its reservoir Raman spectroscopy technology could monitor carbon dioxide sequestered in the Pump Canyon of New Mexico. The company has also used that technology to conduct a variety of studies on naturally occurring carbon dioxide in coals and has used its complementary flow testing technologies to measure the permeability and flow characteristics of underground formations.
WellDog also offers a full suite of downhole formation monitoring products and services, including fiber optic based distributed temperature and pressure sensing, microseismic measurement services, and a range of permanent downhole electronic gauge products. The company focuses on delivering those products and services in a manner that enables reliable and wide deployment in cost constrained environments.