New knowledge and new technology are required to increase the extraction of oil and gas from existing North Sea fields. This challenge is now being taken up by a new national research centre with its headquarters at DTU.
The new research centre will allow Denmark to consolidate its input to improve utilisation of the country’s oil and gas resources in the North Sea. Today, it is only possible to extract around 28 per cent, on average, of the oil and gas in Danish reservoirs.
The new centre is being set up on the basis of an agreement between the Danish government and the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC), with the DUC partners providing the funding. DTU, Maersk Oil and the other parties in DUC are currently engaged in discussions regarding the establishment process.
The centre will not only conduct research, but also provide teaching and training. The overarching goal is to increase the supply of highly qualified people to the Danish oil and gas industry. For example, the centre will be responsible for setting up new postgraduate study programmes, as well as a range of other courses in collaboration with other universities in Denmark.
Four areas of initiative
The research centre will involve researchers from DTU, the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, Aalborg University and GEUS, as well as a number of foreign experts who will provide the professional expertise to focus on four areas of initiative that are crucial to boosting oil and gas extraction in the North Sea:
- Establishing the nature of oil and gas reservoirs
- Increased extraction of oil and gas
- Drilling and production technology
- Production facilities and material technology
A Technology Application Workshop will be set up as an extension to the research centre, tasked with assisting the centre in assuring technology transfer between researchers and industry. It is important to ensure that the new knowledge and new technologies developed at the centre are transferred to the industry as this will help improve extraction in the North Sea.
It is expected that the centre will be officially opened in 2014, and when operating at full capacity it will employ around 100 people.