Embracing the Abundance Mindset
Innovations That Transformed the Subsurface
Reflections from my conversation on the Innovation Underground podcast...
Graham Bain and I covered a range of topics around data centers and their connection to the subsurface. However, one of my favourite questions was about the best innovations I've seen in the subservice space.
I couldn't pick a single favourite, but three examples came to mind.
The first was from my time working cold flow heavy oil in Alberta. Thermal (SAGD) and mining might be the best known extraction techniques for heavy oil in Alberta, but cold flow heavy oil is another important example. What I love about it is how the problems of heavy oil housed in unconsolidated sands were solved. It's too deep to mine and often too thin for SAGD. So what do people do? You produce the reservoir (sand, lots of sand) with the oil.
Another good example comes from the deep water Gulf of Mexico. Some of the first leases in the lower tertiary were acquired before the technology existed to produce at the temperatures and pressures of the reservoirs. I love this example of the industry chasing an opportunity and having a confidence it could engineer and innovate around known problems.
Shale of course, is a third great example. We've all seen how shale has changed the oil and gas markets forever. Think it's about what the technology is actually doing: In a sense it is accelerating what would typically be millions of years of migration into a few short decades to produce oil and gas at a rate that is commercially attractive.
What I love about all three of these examples is a willingness to take what nature is given us and make the most of it. In cold flow, heavy oil we produce the reservoir. In the deep water re-engineered to the pressures and temperatures of the opportunity. In shale we compress the time scale for migration.
At the heart of these innovations is an abundance mindset. A belief that there is more to go get and that there's an ability to go get it. The same folks are chasing geothermal, CCUS, natural hydrogen and other new energy resources (see the NREL map below). It's hard to bet against them.
What are some of your favourite examples of subsurface innovation?
