Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), The Wood lands, Tex., and Texaco Inc. plan to set up a 4,000 sq petroleum and environmental geochemistry research laboratory at HARC, effective Sept. 1.
Texaco donated geochemical tools, intellectual property, patents, inventions, gas chromatographs, and mass spectrometers. It committed two years' funding, and six Texaco research scientists with 5-30 years' experience will become full time HARC employees.
The new lab will expand geochemical technology through collaborative research while fulfilling Texaco's needs in applying the technology to exploration and production operations, said Ronald J. Robinson, general manager of Texaco's Exploration and Production Technology Department.
Texaco and HARC hope to expand the partnership into a broader global industry alliance supported by a large segment of the petroleum industry and staffed by geoscientists from the supporting companies. Funding levels would be based on each entering company's research desires, Robinson said.
Geochemistry combines elements of geology and chemistry. It involves chemical analysis of rocks, oil, gas, and water as well as computer models of physical processes to help solve oil and gas exploration, exploitation, and environmental problems.
Core research - work that supporting companies don't anticipate having commercial use of for at least 2 years - will get 75% of Texaco's funding. The rest will go to support service work. The lab is designed not to compete with routine analyses performed by commercial geochemistry labs, Robinson said.
MULTIFACETED RESEARCH
The geochemistry center will be part of HARC's Geotechnology Research Institute. Unocal Corp. supported the development of a rock physics lab at GTRI last year. Other companies, including Texaco, are considering participation in that work.
GTRI also operates a 3D imaging consortium aimed at producing innovative approaches to 3D processing for improved subsurface imaging. Other projects include seismic modeling and, under Gas Research Institute sponsorship, research on using seismic data for direct detection of hydrocarbons.
Manik Talwani, GTRI director, said oil companies faced with declining research budgets have found that shared research cuts redundancy and enhances their capabilities.
Texaco's Robinson said, "The ability to quickly apply new technology is the advantage, regardless of where the technology originated."
Other than GRI, Stanford University operates a similar alliance and Texas A&M University is forming one, Robinson said.
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