Prashant Jadhawar

PhD student - Eng

Biography

Prashant graduated from Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) affiliated to the University of Pune, India; in August 1996, with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Petroleum Engineering. Later, he joined the same institute as a Lecturer in Petroleum Engineering and Co-ordinator of a postgraduate diploma course in piping design and engineering in May 1997. During this tenure, he earned Master of Engineering degree in Petroleum Engineering from MIT, Pune in December 2000 with second rank in the University of Pune. Prashant worked on gas production from natural gas hydrate reservoirs by CO2 sequestration during MPhil studies at Heriot-Watt University, UK. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Australian School of Petroleum with few teaching assignments, since September 2006.

Research Project

Gas Injection EOR: An Investigation of Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage process

Supervisors: Hemanta Sarma, Seung Ihl Kam, Louisiana State University

Scholarship support: Santos Scholarship

Project Description

Oil from hydrocarbon bearing zone of a petroleum reservoir is produced by virtue of natural pressure (drive) existing within itself. Further oil production is achieved by the injection of water and gas in secondary mode. These primary and secondary methods typically recovers only one-thirds of Original-Oil-In-Place (OOIP) leaving behind two thirds (Lake, 1992). Gas injection processes, especially CO2, has potential to recover this left behind oil (2 trillion barrels) by injection in secondary and tertiary mode. The specific gas (carbon dioxide, hydrocarbon gas, air, flue gas, nitrogen and the associated gas) to be injected depends on the type of application (immiscible or miscible), depth of the injection, pressure and temperature at the target depth, oil composition, local availability, storage and transportation costs and the compression costs. In US, it is the largest EOR process with 82 field projects (out of the reported 88 all over the world) of CO2 EOR. Australia has great CO2 sequestration potential for practicing the enhanced oil recovery options with availability of nearly 50 major CO2 point sources and 100 to 115 million tones of CO2 per year.

Continuous gas injection (CGI) and water-alternating-gas (WAG) processes are highly plagued by the problems of poor gas injectivity, viscous fingering, gas breakthrough etc., and additionally recovers only 5 to 16 %. Conversely, the methods that rely on gravity dominated oil drainage mechanism are reported to recover as high as 87 to 95% of oil. The research project aims to further investigate gas assisted gravity drainage process of enhance oil recovery by addressing various controlling mechanisms through the scaled physical model studies, experimental investigations and the reservoir simulation studies.

Research Publications

Journal papers

Jadhawar, P.S. Natural Gas Hydrates-A potential energy resource. Drilling and Exploration World, 2003; 12(08): 40-44.

Jadhawar, P.S. Gas Hydrate problems in pipelines and its inhibition Chemical Engineering World, 2003; Mumbai India.

Jadhawar, P.S. Flow Assurance with Gas Hydrates in Pipelines. International conference, Indian Oil and Gas Review Symposium - IORS 2003, OIL ASIA, Mumbai, India. Sept. 8-9, 2003.

Jadhawar P.S., Anderson R., Yang J., and Tohidi B., Natural Gas Hydrates - A potential energy resource, Offshore World (Cover Story), India, 2003; 01(01): 31-49.

Jadhawar P., Yang J., Jadhawar J., and Tohidi B. Preliminary Experimental Investigation on Replacing Methane in Hydrate Structure with Carbon Dioxide in Porous Media, Fifth International conference on Gas Hydrates, Trondheim, Norway, June 13-16, 2005.

Jadhawar P.S., Mohmmadi, A., Yang J., and Tohidi B. Subsurface Carbon Dioxide storage through clathrate hydrate formation; In 'Advances in the Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide', NATO Science Series IV: - Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vol.65, Lombardi, S., Altunina, L.K., Beaubien, S.E. (Eds.), Copyright Springer Publications, 2006, XV, 111-126 pp. ISBN: 1-4020-4470-4.

Tohidi, B., Danesh, A., Todd, A.C., Anderson, R., Burgass, R., Arjmandi, M., Masoudi, R., Ji, H., Mohammadi, A., Yang, J., Ren, S., Zain, Z., Mali, G., and Jadhawar, P., Flow Assurance Research at Heriot-Watt University, Presented at the DTI IOR Research Dissemination Seminar, Aberdeen, UK, 24 June, 2004.

Tohidi, B., Danesh, A., Todd, A.C., Anderson, R., Burgass, R., Arjmandi, M., Masoudi, R., Ji, H., Mohammadi, A., Yang, J., Ren, S., Zain, Z., Mali, G., and Jadhawar, P., Gas Hydrates: Friend or Foe?, Presented at the DTI IOR Research Dissemination Seminar, Aberdeen, UK, 24 June, 2004.

Conferences/Workshops

Jadhawar P.S., Mohmmadi A., Yang J., and Tohidi B. Subsurface CO2 storage through clathrate hydrate formation presented at NATO-Advanced Research Workshop, Tomsk, Russia, November 15-19, 2004.

Jadhawar P., Yang J., Jadhawar J., and Tohidi B. Preliminary Experimental Investigation on Replacing Methane in Hydrate Structure with Carbon Dioxide in Porous Media, Fifth International conference on Gas Hydrates, Trondheim, Norway, June 13-16, 2005 (Poster session).

Yang J., Jadhawar P., Chapoy A., and Tohidi B., (2006), Feasibility and optimum conditions of Methane Recovery through Carbon Dioxide Sequestration: An Experimental Study, Conference on Sediment-hosted Gas Hydrates: New Insights on Natural and Synthetic Systems, Society of Underwater Technology and Petroleum Group of Geological Society, London, Jan 25-26.

Reports

"Natural Gas Hydrates: An Indian Perspective", September 2004.

Professional Memberships / Affiliations

• Society of Petroleum Engineers, Student Member
• Petroleum Society, Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum
• Student member of PESA, Australia.
• Student member of AAPG.