LAMONT-DOHERTY EARTH OBSERVATORY OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

 PEtroleum Technology Research Organization (PETRO)

PETRO is the new oil and gas division of Lamont's corporate affiliates program. Its mission is to develop industry consortia and partnerships that foster new discoveries and technologies for the benefit of science and enhanced oil and gas production.

Lamont scientists have made major advances in the Earth Sciences -- such as plate tectonics, basin modeling, and gravity gradiometry --which have benefited the industry. PETRO builds upon Lamont's established thirty-year relationship with multinational, service, and foreign national oil companies.

Over the years, Lamont has launched a variety of consortia with oil companies to explore major industry problems and to develop technologies to solve them. For example, Lamont created a consortium to help oil companies solve the problem of tracking their oil reserves continuously and maximizing oil extraction from these reserves. Consortium members included: Amoco, Chevron, Exxon, Norsk Hydro, Pennzoil, Shell, Statoil, Texaco, and Unocal. As a result of the activities of Lamont's research team and its collaboration with consortium members, Lamont developed active 4D software that will be on the market soon for use by the oil industry in reservoir monitoring. Participants in other consortia and Lamont programs include: ARCO, BP, Conoco, Mobil, Occidental, Schlumberger, and Western Geophysical.

PETRO's focus over the next five years will be on understanding, predicting, and manipulating fluid flow continuously to maximize extraction. Both active 4D and passive (micro-earthquake) 4D seismic monitoring technologies are being developed at Lamont. In addition, its scientists will be involved in studies of bore-hole petro-physics, 3D fluid flow and seismic modeling, data-base mining, and visualization technologies. PETRO's annual conferences for its members will showcase major advances in the development of such technologies.

Roger Anderson is the Director of PETRO and has offices both at Lamont and in Houston. Dr. Anderson's research group developed the above-mentioned active 4D technologies which are used in almost half of the world's twenty-six ongoing reservoir monitoring projects.

Companies joining PETRO receive a variety of benefits:

The membership fee based on a calendar year is $50,000 for full members.

 

Founded in 1949, Lamont is the Earth Sciences research division of Columbia University. Its 137-acre campus, ten miles north of Manhattan, is home to 106 scientists, 26 postdocs, and 100 technicians. Their research covers the full spectrum of the Earth Sciences, including: geophysics, geochemistry, seismology, oceanography, and climate studies. Lamont's distinguished alumni hold senior positions throughout the oil and gas industry and in the federal government.

 

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