nanoTox can help oil and gas companies comply with EPA regulations with respect to releases of nano-particles into the environment, help ensure the safety of the workers using or exposed to nano-particles and maintain compliance with OSHA regulations, and during the R&D process, help developers engineer safe nano-materials.  Our confidentiality will maintain and protect intellectual property and trade secrets. Our full array of services allows nanoTox to become your nanotechnology safety resource.

Oil companies and oil field service companies are researching ways to use nanotechnology to image oil and gas fields, there by increasing to probability of a successful bore hole.  Bore hole strengthening is another sought after application. Other current applications of nanotechnology:

• 1. Nanotechnology-enhanced materials that provide strength and endurance to increase performance and reliability in drilling, tubular goods, and rotating parts.
• 2. Improved elastomers, critical to deep drilling and to improve drilling in high-temperature/high pressure environments.
• 3. Designer properties to enhance hydro-phobic or hydrophilic behavior, to enhance materials for water flood applications.
• 4. Nanoparticulate wetting carried out using molecular dynamics, which shows promise in solvents for heterogeneous surfaces and porous solids.
• 5. Lightweight, rugged materials that reduce weight requirements on offshore platforms, and more-reliable and more-energy-efficient transportation vessels.
• 6. Nanosensors for improved temperature and pressure ratings in deep wells and hostile environments.
• 7. New imaging and computational techniques to allow better discovery, sizing, and characterization of reservoirs.
• 8. Nanosensors deployed in the pore space by means of “nanodust” to provide data on reservoir characterization, fluid-flow monitoring, and fluid-type recognition.
• 9. Small drill-hole evaluation instruments to reduce drilling costs and to provide greater environmental sensitivity because of less drill waste.

Even though many of the ultimate applications place the nano-particles thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, the materials are manufactured, transported, introduced and possibly even returned to the surface during drilling and production operations. All of these actions potentially expose workers and the environment to the nanomaterials.

nanoTox is a member of EPNanoNet and the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.