Summer 2008 Enthusing children about chemistry Predicting properties using informatics Climate change and biogenic emissions The oil industry’s chemical challenges As I see it... So are you finding it increasingly diffi - Oil exploration doesn’t just offer a career for engineers – cult to attract good chemists? chemists are vital, too. Sarah Houlton spoke to Schlumberger’s It can be a challenge, yes. Many of the com - pany’s chemists are recruited here, and they Tim Jones about the crucial role of chemistry in the industry often move on to other sites such as Houston or Paris, but finding them in the first place can be a challenge. Maybe one reason is that the oil People don’t think of Schlumberger as We can’t rely on being able to find suitable industry doesn’t have the greatest profile in a chemistry-using company, but an chemistries in other industries, either, mainly chemistry, and people think it employs engi - engineering one. How important is because of the high temperatures and pressures neers, not chemists. But it’s something the chemistry in oil exploration? that we have to be able to work at. Typically, the upstream oil industry cannot manage without, It’s essential! There are many challenges for upper temperature norm is now 175°C, but even if they don’t realise it! For me, maintaining chemistry in helping to maintain or increase oil we’re increasingly looking to go over 200°C. – if not enhancing – our recruitment is perhaps production. It’s going to become increasingly For heavy oil, where we heat the oil up with one of the biggest issues we face. And to do that, important, particularly for recovery, as oil steam to reduce its viscosity to make it easier to we show young chemists how exciting the reserves become more difficult to get at. We extract, the high temperatures also provide chemistry challenges facing the industry are. don’t as an industry do a good job of recovering challenges for making measurements. known reserves in reservoirs. As well as geologi - Another example of a problem this causes is cal problems, there is an enormous surface with the cement that is pumped into boreholes. s chemistry aspect to the displacement of oil to get Preventing it from setting too quickly is a chal - e it out of the porous rocks. Usually, this is done lenge if it’s being pumped several kilometres! n o with an immiscible fluid like water, but the pores As the temperature goes up, reaction rates also J are generally only a few microns across, and cap - increase, and it sets more rapidly, so we have m illary forces dominate, so the rock naturally developed additives to retard the setting i retains the oil. We are fighting the natural wetting process. Other additives are also needed to stop T properties of the reservoir, as well as the nature it separating into its solid and liquid compo - of the crude oil itself which often contains sur - nents, and we need dispersants to ensure it V factant-like molecules which want to keep the remains pumpable. Conversely, if we’re dealing C reservoir oil wetting and prevent the water we with a shallow well, we actually need to accel - introduce from displacing the oil. erate the set process as we don’t want to be waiting for days for the cement to set! There must be challenges with issues like materials, too. Making measurements in those envi - Definitely, and this is becoming increasingly ronments must also be difficult. important. When I first joined the company 25 Oh yes. We have excelled at doing physical meas - years ago, materials chemistry was little known urements and have developed instruments to in the oil industry, but now we are finding that measure pretty much everything you can think of the materials and molecules we need aren’t read - – from density to natural gamma rays, and we Born: Overton, Hampshire, the small village ily available and we have to develop and make even do low field NMR at 2MHz to look at the where banknotes are made them ourselves. We now need polymers that will relaxation rates and diffusivity of protons. But Status: He met his wife Deborah Patterson survive high temperature and contact with water chemical sensors are an entirely different proposi - when he started at Schlumberger, and she over long periods of time, and the conditions of tion. Even seemingly simple things like pH are dif - was setting up the library. She now works in the reserves we’re now trying to find and extract ficult to measure. While physicists have the advan - the Cambridge university development office. are becoming more hostile. Typically, in the tage of being able to use electromagnetic or They have two children – Michael has just North Sea, sea depths are up to 500m, but now acoustic waves to measure things, to make a finished his first year at Sheffield studying oilfields in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast chemical measurement you first have to capture a history, and Emily is in Year 10 at school. of Brazil are creeping towards the edge of the sample of the molecule. You then have move it into Education : He went to grammar school and continental shelf, and the sea floor might be 3km a sensor that’s ideally very clean because the crude sixth form college in Basingstoke, then below the surface. As well as the engineering oil, sand and salty water will affect the outcome, studied chemistry at Imperial. He moved to challenges, the chemistry gets more difficult, and then move it out again afterwards to leave the Sussex for a DPhil on the surface chemistry too. If the oil comes out of a warm reservoir and sensor free for the next measurement. Measuring of liquid–liquid interfaces with Ernie Boucher goes into a cold pipe, it will cool down and hydrogen sulfide levels is also a problem, as it is deposit wax on the surface of the pipeline. scavenged by the metalwork of the tools. So we are Career: After three years at BP in Sunbury, developing an in situ sensor using a variety of new he moved to Schlumberger in Cambridge in Yet the chemistry effort in the oil com - materials, including boron-doped diamond elec - 1983, a year or so before the tent was panies themselves has dwindled in trodes which minimise fouling. finished. ‘We worked in a Portakabin – recent years, hasn’t it? calibrating the balance was impossible!’ he It’s definitely fair to say that the chemistry effort What about environmental issues? says. He is now a Scientific Advisor, starting in the upstream oil industry is less than it was a One area we’re looking at is trying to reduce and working on new research projects. generation ago, particularly because we’ve seen the amount of gas that’s flared on oil fields Interests: Reading – mostly non-fiction and a decline in the research activities of the major around the world. It’s a major issue, as all it history – and classical music, particularly oil companies. We have to fight very hard to does is put carbon dioxide into the air for no piano, although he doesn’t play himself. He bring chemistry expertise into the upstream oil benefit. A couple of years ago, the World Bank also has a curious love of church industry, and not just be seen as having isolated estimated that 150 billion cubic metres of nat - architecture, particularly Romanesque. And chemists who are put on problem issues. It’s ural gas are flared every year – if that could be he admits to taking mountains of scientific clear that if we’re not going to be finding large liquefied it would satisfy about 1.5% of global papers home to read. numbers of giant oil and gas fields, we have to demand for liquid hydrocarbons. We’re hoping Did you know? Tim used to play blindfold manage the resources we have, and get better at that it will soon be economic to recover it. We chess – all done by memory – and used to extracting the oil from them, and chemistry is also have several active engineering projects beat his (unblindfolded) friends as a student. going to be incredibly important in that. working on CO 2 sequestration. 2 Chem@Cam Summer 2008 Reluctant reactions Letters supervisor. In his later years as an aca - David would do his rounds daiuly demic administrator he had the hardi - and tell us about the latest book he was dood to tell Margaret Thatcher to reading – China was his subject at the belt up (in a politely coded way) so time. He would then leave with a joke that he could make his contribution to or a terribly bad attempt at a Welsh a discussion. accent (loosely based on Fluellen’ in She did not hold it against him and Henry V). his memoirs are prefaced by a notably He was a remarkably kind and con - civil letter from her. His book, strongly siderate man. recommended, is ‘Doubts and Cer - Yours sincerely, tainties’, published by Sheffield Rhobert Lewis (Christ’s 1976) Academic Press in 2001. Faculty of Health, Sport and Science, Regards, University of Glamorgan Bob Throssell (Caius, 1941–3 and 1946–51) 2 Lodge Court, Hollins Hall, Harrogate Putting things straight HG3 2WX Dear Editor, There are some inaccuracies in the obit - Of opera and clarity uary of David Husain. ‘He became Norrish’s assistant, his last…’, is false: J.F. Dear Editor, Ogilvie was appointed assistant in I write as one who appreciated Martin research on 1 January 1964, but had Mays’ recollections of Alan Sharpe.