Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering

Welcome to the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Research (CPGE). Our mission is to

encourage and develop interdisciplinary research in petroleum and geosystems engineering as well as other areas related to energy and the environment,
provide educational opportunities for graduate students.
provide an organizational structure for funding new areas of research, and
conduct meetings, symposia, and workshops on research topics and provide a mechanism for technology transfer.

Please explore our many research programs and contact the Program Managers or myself if you would like additional information.

Thank you,
Gary A. Pope, Director (gpope@mail.utexas.edu)

April 2009
[EFRC logo] New Research Center Announced: The Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security (CFSES) was announced in late April. Dr. Gary Pope will be the director of the new research center. Funding for the center comes as part of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Awards from the Department of Energy's Office of Science. CPGE, in partnership with UT's Jackson School of Geology, UT's Institute for Computational Engineering, and Sandia National Labs will receive approximately $15.5 million over a five-year period. The goal of the center is to explain the movement or transport of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in geological systems. Please see the official press release (PDF document) or the EFRC page for more info on this historic research opportunity.

New Research Program: We're pleased to announce the formation of a new CPGE research program, the Nanoparticle Engineering for Subsurface Processes Research Program. The new program's focus is on the use of various nano-scale materials ("nanoparticles") for certain processes that increase oil recovery and for more accurate determination of changes in fluid saturations and reservoir properties during oil and gas production. Please see the Nanoparticle Engineering for Subsurface Processes Research Program page for a list of projects and investigators.

March 2009
Research Spotlight: We recently added information on two research projects being spearheaded by Drs. Quoc Nguyen and Gary Pope to the Fundamental Processes and Reservoir Engineering Research Program pages. The projects:

Characterization of Surface Energies of Hydrocarbon Formation Rocks for Enhanced Hydrocarbon Recovery
Alkali-Surfactant-Gas Injection as a Novel Enhanced Oil Recovery Technique

Please see the Fundamental Processes page for information on the first project and the Reservoir Engineering page for more info on the second. And, while you're there...feel free to browse around a bit and see what we're up to here at CPGE.

February 2009
Making the Cover: Our research was recently featured on the cover of SPE Journal. "Buoyancy-Dominated Multiphase Flow and Its Effect on Geological Sequestration of CO2" by Steven L. Bryan, Srivatsan Lakshminarasimhan, and Gary A. Pope (SPE 99938-PA) appeared in the December, 2008, issue of SPE Journal and made the front cover. The paper addresses the question of whether the intrinsic instability of a buoyancy-driven immiscible displacement leads to fingering. For more info, please see the abstract at SPE's e-Library. And, for a full look at the cover (in a separate browser window), click on the image above.

January 2009
[Photo of Kishore Mohanty] We are very pleased to announce a new addition to our faculty and research teams: Dr. Kishore K. Mohanty. He comes to us from the University of Houston and his research focuses on transport of simple and complex fluids in complex microstructured materials for applications in energy, environment and biotechnology. Initially, he will be working with the Fundamental Processes, Natural Gas Engineering, and Reservoir Engineering research programs. Welcome to UT, Kishore!

December 2008
[Photo of Steve Bryant] In the News: Professor Steven Bryant's work to develop a novel storage method in carbon sequestration that eliminates the risk of carbon dioxide escaping via buoyancy. The idea: drill wells in the deep, salt-water filled formation, pump out the salt water, dissolve the carbon dioxide into the salt water in a mixing tank at the surface, and then inject the CO2-laden water back into the same formation. We've made a NatureNews article and several clippings available for download: 1 MB PDF file. Please see the Geological CO2 Storage Research Project page for more information on some of Dr. Bryant's research.