American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2019 - 89

SpecialReport: Oil Field Chemistry
isms that survived were able to flourish
once the fluids returned to the surface
and cooled, which led to extremely high
corrosion rates in topside separation facilities and production pipelines."
It is possible to fight corrosion-causing
microbes at the surface, but to reduce
overall costs, Keasler recommends controlling them from the start. This control
involves a robust biocide program during
drilling, completion and drill-out operations. "Appropriate treatment programs
will vary from one formation to the next,"
he acknowledges. "Understanding the
risk and designing an appropriate program
is key to reducing a microorganism's potential impact."
Nalco Champion's research continues
to find ways to predict and control microbial risks more accurately, Horsup
says. "We have been deploying new
analytic techniques, such as quantitative
polymerase chain reaction technology,
to quantify microbes and identify highrisk organisms in operators' pipelines,
filters and membranes," he explains.
"By studying how different microbial
consortia correlate to corrosion, we are
able to estimate customers' risk based
on an infrastructure's microbial populations."
As part of that effort, Keasler says,
the company partnered with the Center
for Advancement of Science in Space
and NASA to utilize microgravity to understand the mechanism of microbial corrosion risks better.
"Previous research established that
biofilm thickness, mass and cell number
are significantly increased on the International Space Station (ISS) relative to
what is observed on earth," Keasler says.
"By comparing the biofilms and corrosion
rates in microgravity and Earth's gravity,
we can begin to understand the factors
that directly influence the localized corrosion phenomenon."
Understanding microbial corrosion
risks would be difficult on Earth alone
because it would be impossible to grow
a larger but otherwise identical biofilm
without a corresponding passage of time,
notes Keasler. Aside from biofilm thickness
and time, other factors that may drive
corrosion rates include a bacteria's total
mass and activity levels.
"We have completed the growth experiments on the ISS and the Earth controls
and are analyzing the data from the experiment. We hope to complete our findings in 2020," Keasler says.

Enhancing Production
To help unconventional operators improve initial production rates and flatten
their decline curves, Nalco Champion
has been actively developing novel chemical solutions, Horsup reports. "To maximize their impact, we are tailoring formulations to reservoir characteristics,"
details Horsup. "Geology, temperature,
pressure, and water salinity all dictate
the optimal formulation."
The company is finding formulations
that work in both high temperatures or
high salinities and are compatible with
conventional completion fluids, Keasler
adds.
"On the production side, we are developing digital technologies to identify
wells that need attention so we can manage
by exception rather than checking every
well," he describes. "We also are refining
monitoring techniques for production issues such as paraffin so we can offer
more precise and accurate chemical recommendations."
When the company dispatches technicians to a well site, they may be equipped
with intrinsically safe augmented reality
headsets to enhance their problem-solving
capabilities, Horsup mentions. "If they
come across a problem, they can use this
technology to connect to a center staffed
by our top experts, show what they see,
and get immediate advice, which enables
us to bring our best minds to the field in
real time," he concludes.

Accelerating Innovation
To help operators continue to become
leaner and meaner, chemical providers
must develop more efficient internal
processes, argues Jonathan Wylde, head
of innovation for Clariant's oil and mining
business unit. "To remain competitive,
we need to look at the way we conduct
research and development, so we can develop solutions to operators' problems
faster and cheaper," he says.
Toward that end, Wylde says Clariant
has expanded its laboratory in Houston
to include high-throughput experimentation (HTE), a technique that allows
chemists to automate experiments, and
conduct several in parallel, using robotics,
miniaturization and data analytics. According to the company, the facility is
the first of its kind supporting the oil and
gas industry.
To illustrate HTE's power, Wylde uses
corrosion inhibitors, which he estimates
account for 25 percent of production
chemical spending. "High-throughput experimentation can provide a performance
indicator on a corrosion inhibitor formulation every 15 minutes, meaning it can
evaluate 96 formulations a day," he says.
"That is much faster than traditional application testing, which takes weeks for
each formulation.
"HTE does not replace such testing,"
he notes. "However, it allows us to look
at a much wider range of formulations
and ranks them, so we can focus more

By leveraging robotics, miniaturization and data analytics to automate experiments,
chemists at Clariant's new high-throughput experimentation laboratory in Houston can
evaluate formulations rapidly. The company predicts this capability will help it develop
more cost-effective solutions for common problems, including corrosion, scale, paraffin
and methane hydrates.

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American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2019

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