An interview with Dr. Alan J. Cohen

Introduction

The U.S. Department of Energy's office of Oil and Gas Research supports many programs that might surprise the average geologist. For example, many do not know that the 17 national laboratories connected to the DOE were instrumental in launching shale plays and have also been on the cutting edge of improving natural gas infrastructure.

Welcome to an interview with Dr. Alan J. Cohen, Director of the Office of Oil and Gas Research at the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Cohen will be speaking in Salt Lake City at AAPG ACE.

What is your name and your experience in the energy industry?

I am Dr Alan J Cohen. I have forty years of Energy industry experience in oil and gas exploration and production in leadership and advisory roles at Royal Dutch Shell and Ecopetrol, and as an executive at several oil service companies. Since mid 2017 I have been a career senior executive serving at the United States Department of Energy based in Washington DC. I also served as Adjunct Professor of Geology at University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

What is your role at the the U.S. Department of Energy?

I am the Director of the Office of Oil and Gas Research. I lead the effort to invest in R and D that can make a difference to this country, in partnership with our national labs, industry and academia.

What are some of the activities of the Research office in the U.S. Department of Energy?

The Office makes investments in both the upstream E and P and Midstream sectors that could help the United States achieve the administrationís goal of aenergy dominance. We focus on lower technical readiness level programs and projects that could eventually be of interest to the oil and gas industry, but are currently at an early enough stage that companies may not wish to fund such activities solely on their own at present.

What are some of the research activities that have recently been funded?

We have a number of funding mechanisms which I plan to discuss at an invited session of the AAPG Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City this Spring. We recently awarded several projects to industry and academia as part of a Funding Opportunity announcement. The details should be made public around March 15, 2018, but at a high level we are funding activities at four new ìfield labs,î where we can test and calibrate new technologies in the field, and are funding two projects focused on improved cements, and coatings for offshore wells and pipelines.

We also fund activities at our 17 national labs and are pursuing exciting R and D on: improving shale oil and shale gas recovery efficiency; enhanced offshore spill prevention; improved natural gas infrastructure and pipelines of the future; and characterization and production testing of gas from methane hydrate bearing sediments.

The above activities include: lab measurements, fundamental modeling, advanced sensors and materials, and big data/machine learning studies. We also support high performance computing, including Exascale computing.

Please describe the Upstream Workshop that took place on February 14 in Houston.

What were the goals? What do you view as the positive outcomes? DOE invited representatives from about 30 oil and service companies, and 10 national labs to a one day meeting to learn about our R and D activities and results and to engage in a dialogue. Chatham House rules were in effect - ideas from the plenary session and breakouts were scribed as anonymous and industry reps were advised to not share their proprietary information. No concensus was reached. The event set the stage to develop more lasting relationships with industry.

DOE received many thoughtful ideas and suggestions and the attendees were enthusiastic about the engagement and regarded the event as successful.

As but one example, there was industry interest in the fundamental physics and geochemistry measurements and models that we have been developing that could improve shale oil and shale gas recovery significantly, and we were encouraged to continue working in this area. Big data and machine learning was also an area of mutual interest.

How does your office help facilitate knowledge and technology transfer?

DOE makes every effort to encourage the entities it funds to publish and present key results in as timely a manner as possible. In my role, I have also formed a leadership team across DOE and the national labs, and a knowledge management team, to exchange technology and knowledge across the national lab system. This has helped to integrate discrete technical results and reduce project cycle time. In addition, my Office has met with industry and academia quite often to share and help transfer technology. Our field laboratories can also be a key starting point in technology validation and transfer. In addition, we are presenting results this year, and have in the past, at major conferences including; AAPG, SPE, SEG, OTC, URTEC and others.

What are some of the next steps?

We are building a stronger relationship with Dr. Susan Nash of AAPG and her counterparts at other industry societies. We are considering how to include more geological methods and thinking into a basin/play specific approach to better characterize resource shales and improve development and production. We are discussing greater and targeted use of 3D surface seismic data at our field labs. And we are especially interested in working big data/machine learning/predictive analytics studies in partnership with industry. DOE and several national labs recently participated with a few industry reps at a machine learning conference for the geosciences. In total, we have over 1000 staff working machine learning projects and developing methods that could be applied to oil and gas and pipeline problems.