Technologies that will increase the low rate of ultimate recoveries in shale plays are the next disruptive forces in US oil and gas production, experts said Tuesday in Washington. “The revolutionary change will be breaking out of the primary recovery trap,” Schlumberger fellow Robert Kleinberg said. “How do you recover more?” Kleinberg, a physicist who invents geophysical instruments, didn’t know what shape the technology that would upend production in shale oil and gas fields would take, but he predicted it would focus on improving the relatively low rate of ultimate recoveries in shale wells. “We’re basically in the ‘gusher’ era,” said Kleinberg, who was speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a joint event with the National Capital Area Chapter of the US Association for Energy Economics. “This is where the disruption is going to come.” Conventional wells have primary, secondary […]