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By Ernest Scheyder
WILLISTON, N.D., March 27 (Reuters) - The tech geeks arecoming to the oil industry's rescue.
With the price of crude plumbing lows notseen since 2009, Royal Dutch Shell, Whiting PetroleumCorp and many others are turning to rocket fuel, BigData, lasers, spectrometers and other new or revampedtechnologies to do more for less.
As North America's oil companies slash spending and lay offworkers, established services firms and start-upsare hawking products that better assess oil and gas deposits,help drill fewer but bigger new wells, and boost output from oldones.
Baker Hughes Inc saw more client inquiries aboutproducts that increase efficiency of existing wells in the firstthree months this year than in all of the past two years, saidHC Freitag, vice president of integrated technology at the oilservice giant.
"Since the beginning of the year, we've had a dramaticallyhigher number of conversations with customers."
It is too early to judge whether the new tools can produce gains similar to those of the past six years, when well outputkept rising at double-digit rates and the time needed to drilland frack new wells dwindled to about 10 days from 40.
But U.S. shale oil producers have a history of repeatedlyexceeding expectations with their ability to innovate and liftproductivity.
Scott Johnson, a petroleum engineering professor at theUniversity of North Dakota, says new technologies do have thepotential to help the industry offset the impact of lost jobsand spending cuts.
"Companies are often so busy when prices are high, theydon't have an opportunity to take a look at new technology,"said Johnson, who is leading a high-tech analysis of coresamples taken from across the state's Bakken shale formation.
"That's why they want the engineers to think out of the boxand take new opportunities especially when prices are low."
SILICON VALLEY MEETS NORTH DAKOTA
To be sure, oil producers are only beginning to experimentwith some of these newer solutions and tech firms that offerthem are talking about rapid expansion, but from a low base.
For example, privately held GroundMetrics Inc originallyused its technology applying electromagnetic sensors to trackfluid movements deep underground in geothermal wells and onlylate last year started marketing it for shale formations.
The company, which grew out of U.S. Department of Defenseresearch, has two shale customers now - BP and Statoil - but expects that number to grow to 12 by the end ofthis year.
GroundMetrics estimates that its cheaper and more efficientalternative to microseismic technology used now in energyexploration will allow oil firms to drill 10 percent fewerwells. That, executives say, could translate into over $20billion in annual savings for the whole industry if widelyapplied.
"Oil companies drill more wells than they need to," saidGeorge Eiskamp, the GroundMetrics chief executive. "We can helpreduce the number of wells that are fracked without reducingproduction, thus cutting costs."
WellDog Inc is another company that is adapting an existingtechnology for shale oil clients. The privately-held firm wasfounded to work with coalbed methane producers. It's now startedto market its spectroscopy technology to shale clients to helpdistinguish between cheap reserves of methane and more-lucrativeethane, propane and butane reserves.
The technology also helps gauge pressure in oil wells sothey can be managed better. Since last year, WellDog has takenon seven U.S. shale companies as customers, including WhitingPetroleum, which operates in Texas, North Dakota and Colorado.
WellDog, which said its sales doubled to $18.5 million lastyear, aims to double or even triple the number of customers thisyear, expanding at a time when most of the industry is scalingback.
"We're hiring," said WellDog's executive vice presidentJames Walker.
Baker Hughes, which counts Shell as a key client,is heavily marketing well "rejuvenations," using proprietarysoftware and crunching Big Data from thousands of wells to findnew ways to coax more oil from existing wells.
In some cases, Baker Hughes has been able to double adeclining well's output, Freitag said.
In Houston, which doubles as the world's energy capital andhome to the U.S. space program, there is also occasionalcrossover between aerospace and energy.
Core Laboratories is reporting a surge in demandfrom the oil industry for its Kodiak Enhanced Perforatingsystem, which uses cartridges filled with a substance used insolid-fuel rockets. Instead of propelling rockets into space, itis used to explode inside a well to help create fracks, sayssales executive Mike Peveto.
"Now that the price of oil is dropping, there's some peoplewho want to squeeze as much oil as they can out of a well." (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Terry Wade and TomaszJanowski)
