Technology creates continuous strain profiles with microscopic detail that increases the safety and production efficiency of subsurface oil and gas systems
Luna Innovations Inc. (NASDAQ: LUNA) today announced that, working in partnership with Shell’s GameChanger™ early-stage-technologies program, it has developed an innovative concept for measuring in-situ stresses in subsurface rock using its fiber optic sensing solutions. When deployed, this technique would provide critical measurements with unmatched consistency and depth resolution, allowing safer and more efficient well operations.
Businesses that rely on underground operations, such as the petroleum and geothermal industries, require accurate estimates of in-situ stress, which refers to the existing pressure that exists underground before a hole is drilled. This affects drilling, surveying, and fluid injection (hydraulic fracturing, water flooding, CO2 sequestration) as well as phenomena such as fault re-activation and induced seismicity.
The new technology, Luna’s Continuous Horizontal In-situ Stress Logger (CHISL), uses Luna’s high-definition fiber optic sensing (HD-FOS) and ODiSI® product to obtain direct, high-resolution strain measurements of induced micro-fractures and borehole deformation. New algorithms then process the strain measurements at the borehole to estimate in-situ maximum and minimum horizontal stress and their orientations.
“The development of this new technology -- using existing Luna fiber optic sensors and our ODiSI instrument -- lets the oil & gas industry assess critical parameters that have otherwise been unmeasurable,” said Scott Graeff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Luna. “We greatly appreciate Shell GameChanger for its support as well as its expertise with use cases in the oil & gas industry. Together, we show how the industry’s toughest test, measurement, and analysis challenges can be tackled with ideas like CHISL.”
Luna’s CHISL sensor integrates fiber optic sensors into a flexible hydraulic sleeve, which applies pressure to a borehole wall until small longitudinal fractures are formed. Unlike hydraulic fracturing, where fluid flows into the fractures and causes them to grow in length away from the borehole, CHISL does not allow the fluid to flow into the induced fractures.
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