Technology developed by Researchers in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering can generate a map, which significantly increase the amount of oil extracted from reservoirs. This technology uses the digital image compression technique of JPEG to create comprehensive maps of underground oil reservoirs using measurements from scattered oil wells. This innovative simulation approach improves current reservoir characterization techniques and provides better predictions of oil-reservoir production. According to Behnam Jafarpour, a recent MIT graduate who is now an assistant professor in petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University and Jafarpour and Dennis McLaughlin, the H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of Water Resource Management at MIT, better predictions lead to more efficient operations and increased oil production.

The new technique uses oil flow rates and pressure data from oilfield wells to create a realistic image of the subsurface reservoir. The methods developed extract more information from those limited measurements to provide better descriptions of subsurface pathways and the oil moving through them," said McLaughlin, lead researcher on the project.The new technique is robust, accurate and efficient. Next step -- already in progress -- to test an idea in real oil reservoirs and evaluate its impact on oil recovery under realistic field settings.

By Vasil Sidorov on March 6, 2009 after MIT Tech Talk