The Office of Natural Gas (ONG) efforts in Technology Needs Assessment was initiated largely in response to recommendations presented by the National Petroleum Council (NPC) in their 1999 report, "Meeting the Challenges of the Nation's Growing Natural Gas Demand".  In that report,
NPC specifically noted the benefits of 1) improved knowledge of the size and nature of the resource base, 2) an accurate inventory of resources in the Rocky Mountain region and the impact of federal land access restrictions on them, and 3) efforts to define and prioritize R&D opportunities that will expand the resource potential of both producing and unexplored areas.

To provide analytical support to the identification
of R&D opportunities, ONG's Technology Needs Assessment work is based on detailed and unique characterizations of the geographic and geologic distribution of gas-in-place resources in priority basins.  These descriptions dissect the gas-in-place of selected accumulations into thousands of individually-characterized cells, or resource "packets". The effort is focused particularly on estimating those key parameters that directly impact resource size (volumetric parameters), reservoir productivity (effective fracture permeability) and economics (drilling depth).  Parameters are determined through the direct analysis of thousands of geophysical well logs as well as production records and remote sensing data.  These data are then fed to the ONG's analytical models to determine each resource "packet" to changes in modeling parameters, allowing for very sensitive analyses of future recoverability under a wide range of time frames and technology/policy scenarios. 

Phase I of this work, completed in February 2003, has determined that more than 4,700 trillion cubic feet of gas exists in-place in selected formations of the Greater Green River and Wind River Basins of Wyoming.  Initial analyses of these datasets indicate that approximately 97% of this gas is not economically-recoverable with existing technologies. However, the analyses also indicate that resource recoverability can be significantly expanded by advanced technologies that reduce the costs and risks of exploration, drilling and production in tight and deep formations.  These findings will be used within the ONG to identify which of the many available R&D avenues to pursue given limited federal funding. 

Please click on the picture above to learn how to order a copy of ONG's Phase I final report.  In addition to detailed descriptions of project methodology and results, the CD contains numerous detailed maps and cross-sections that depict the regional geology of key gas-bearing formations.  Follow the links above to learn more about the project's background, methodology, and findings, or to learn the status of ongoing Phase II work in the Uinta Basin of Utah and the Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma and Texas.