Representatives from Petronas, the state-owned oil and gas company in Malaysia – a Southeast Asian country – visited the Institute of Geosciences (IG) and the Center for Energy and Petroleum Studies (Cepetro) at Unicamp on August 31st. Omar Nizar Bin Abdullah, Jonas Castro and Fernando de Filippo visited the University's infrastructure, where the first Research and Development (R&D) projects contracted by the company in Brazil will be developed. Project presentations also took place on the occasion.
According to professor Ricardo Perobelli Borba, from the Department of Geology and Natural Resources at IG, the company approached Cepetro to make a blind call, at Unicamp, for projects related to oil and gas. 55 projects were registered, but only three were signed with the company – two based at Cepetro and one at IG. The project that will be developed at IG, under the coordination of Ricardo Borba, has an execution period of four years and will involve an investment of around R$6 million, including financing scholarships for three doctoral students and two post-doctoral students. In addition to Borba, professors Alfredo Borges de Campos and Wanilson Luiz Silva will work on the project. There is also the possibility of other undergraduate and postgraduate students participating in it.
Cepetro will take care of the administrative part of the research, while IG will develop the scientific part. To this end, the Unit is acquiring equipment to implement a laboratory dedicated to research, which aims to improve oil recovery (Enhanced Oil Recovery-EOR), increasing the level of efficiency in its extraction. EOR is a generic term for techniques used in order to increase the amount of crude oil that could not otherwise be extracted from a field. In recent decades, there has been a decline in the number of discoveries of oil and gas reserves. Therefore, increasing improved oil recovery factors will be critical to meeting energy demand in the coming years. “The laboratory, which will be a pioneer at IG, will allow experiments to be carried out with pressures and temperatures in the pre-salt reservoir, contributing to the EOR and the capture, use and storage of carbon”, informed Borba.
