Ten projects focused on ways to increase U.S. supplies of unconventional natural gas and oil have been selected for partial federal funding, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said Monday.

Four of the projects involve advanced computer simulation and visualization capabilities to enhance knowledge of how to improve production and minimize environmental impacts. Advancing simulation and visualization technologies may improve assessments and an understanding of the cumulative environmental impacts, as well as models to improve unconventional fossil energy recovery.

Six projects would involve next-generation carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to enable pilot testing.

In total the projects are worth about $12.2 million, of which DOE would fund $9 million. Research would be managed by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

For the advanced simulation and visualization projects, DOE selected projects submitted by NITEC LLC of Denver; the University of Texas (UT) at Austin (two projects); and the University of Illinois/Illinois State Geological Survey of Champaign, IL.

Next-generation CO2 EOR projects were selected for study at Impact Technologies LLC of Tulsa; UT at Austin (two projects); UT of the Permian Basin in Midland, TX; Sky Research Inc. of Ashland, OR; and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology/Petroleum Research Center of Socorro, NM.

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