Silixa Chief Expects CCS Boom To Create “Huge Opportunity” for Fiber Optics

Abstract

_ Fiber optics represents one of the biggest technological success stories in the recent history of the oil and gas industry. A single fiber-optic cable installed outside the casing, inside the tubing, can deliver a wealth of data over a well’s life cycle. It can sense minute shifts in acoustics, temperature, and has recently been developed to detect changes in near-wellbore strain—all prized clues as to what is helping or hurting productivity. But less than a decade ago, the ultrathin glass cables were considered exotic, and only a handful of first adopters dared to deploy them downhole. The sensing technology has, of course, gone on to become a mainstay of subsurface diagnostic programs for operators working across the planet. Now, with their skills sharpened in the upstream industry, many fiber-optics developers are gearing up for what appears to be a coming boom in carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity. Among them is UK-based Silixa. Founded in 2007, Silixa’s innovations have improved on the spatial resolution of fiber measurements and enabled real-time monitoring of fracture growth and production. Last year, the company installed the world’s first subsea distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system for BP to enable 4D seismic acquisition in the Gulf of Mexico. Glynn Williams, CEO of Silixa, shares in this Q&A how all this experience points to fiber having a major role to play in the rise of the CCS sector—especially when it comes to safety and regulatory matters. His background features more than 30 years spent in the upstream industry’s data acquisition arena. Williams also holds a degree in mining engineering from the University of Wales and is a member of SPE. Where do you see the carbon sequestration sector headed—is an inflection point coming? This now consumes a lot of my time. We see CCS as a huge opportunity because we’ve been engaged with the sector for a long period of time. For the type of solutions that we deliver, we can extract perhaps $1 of value for each ton per year of CO2 that is stored. When you look at the projections by the IEA, which suggest we may be storing over 7.5 gigatons of CO2 by 2050, that relates to $7.6 billion of value. That’s if we were to be successful in securing all of that—there will be other players alongside us. But to this point, we’ve provided services to 17 CCS sites going back as early as 2012. So, we’ve got a track record with our environmental business unit that serves CCS, and we’re seeing in the current period a twofold increase in pipeline opportunities. We feel that particular business unit will account for 40% of our overall pipeline in 2023.