ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS AND IMAGING (Low Permeability Gas Formations)

The summary for the ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS AND IMAGING (Low Permeability Gas Formations) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Energy Technology Laboratory, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

ADVANCED DIAGNOSTICS AND IMAGING (Low Permeability Gas Formations): This descriptive area provides and overview of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). For details on additional evaluation criteria and how to prepare an application, please scroll under the heading Full Announcement and Other Files and click on the link to access the FOA. The general purpose of the Department of Energy (DOE), National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) through this Funding Opportunity is to receive applications for cost-shared research projects to develop advanced technologies and techniques that improve detection, characterization, and/or production from low-permeability gas accumulations. The Area of Interest addressed by this announcement is targeted at seismic technology, well logging tools and analysis, completion and stimulation techniques, and geochemical or geophysical tools and techniques. The primary goal of the effort is to contribute to the overall target of doubling the current recoverability of low-permeability gas formations (that contribute approximately 25 percent of the U.S. gas supply) to enable the nation to fulfill its expectations for expanding unconventional gas supply. Projects should have a research/development phase (Phase 1), followed by a validation/demonstration phase (Phase 2) in which the Phase I strategy is put to practical test on a real data set or through a field verification. Phase I requires a minimum 20% cost share, and Phase II must have a minimum 50% cost share. The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy, Fossil Energy's Natural Gas Technologies Program is to provide the technologies that will assure abundant, reliable, affordable, and environmentally sound supplies of natural gas. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. natural gas demand will grow 17 percent by 2025 (Annual Energy Outlook 2006). As noted in a recent study by the National Petroleum Council, Balancing Natural Gas Policy Fueling the Demands of a Growing Economy, meeting these expectations will require finding, developing, and producing more technologically-challenging resources than ever before. In particular, current projections rely on low-permeability formations, particularly those occurring in the Rocky Mountain region, to meet the bulk of the needed additional supply. Although recent assessments of marginal, sub-economic resources indicate that thousands of Tcf of gas exists in-place in domestic onshore low permeability gas reservoirs, only a small portion of this vast potential resource is economically-recoverable using current exploration and production technologies. Our understanding of low permeability gas systems, and the tools available to image and characterize them, must improve to enable a full and accurate appraisal and further development of this resource's potential. The Advanced Diagnostics and Imaging (Low-Permeability Gas Formations) Funding Opportunity supports the goal of the Natural Gas Technologies Program by developing government-industry (including academia) partnerships to develop technologies that will improve and advance our understanding, and maximize the recoverability, of these technologically-challenging resources. The objective of this funding opportunity is to develop and/or apply advanced technologies and techniques that improve detection, characterization, and/or production of low-permeability gas accumulations. These advances are required to expand resource recoverability in low-permeability gas plays, both through new field discoveries and through improved development strategies to optimize production in existing fields.