Office of Oil and Gas

The Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office’s (HGEO’s) Office of Oil and Gas leads and supports the research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to ensure resilience of U.S. oil and natural gas by improving recovery factors and infrastructure reliability. 

The Office of Oil and Gas supports HGEO’s goals through the following objectives:

• Increase the recovery factor in unconventional reservoirs 
• Lower the break-even cost of primary recovery operations 
• Transform produced water into an economic resource 
• Increase efficiencies and reliability of midstream infrastructure
• Develop advanced energy systems that provide low-cost baseload power and products 

The Office of Oil and Gas includes three divisions aligned with industry, 1) Production, 2) Transportation & Storage, and 3) Power, Fuels & Chemicals. 

Divisions

Production

Mission: Focused on developing technologies to advance production of oil and natural gas resources, emerging resources, and management of produced water.

• Water Research: Waste to resource; Industry collaboration
• Field Laboratories: Basin-specific strategy; Fundamental shale; Emerging plays
• Offshore: Spill prevention; Borehole integrity; Aging infrastructure
• Methane Hydrates: Resource characterization; International collaboration
• Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning: Science-informed Machine Learning for Accelerating Real-Time Decisions in Subsurface Applications (SMART) initiative; Reservoir characterization; Interagency collaboration
• Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR): 
  • Low-cost anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) resources from point source capture (coal plants, ethanol, cement etc.)
  • Field-based RD&D initiatives in CO₂-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects
  • Enhanced compositional and flow metering capabilities across CO₂-EOR transport networks
  • Advanced metallic and non-metallic materials
  • Innovations in operational sweep efficiency and monitoring procedures

Transportation & Storage

Mission: Develop cutting-edge technology solutions and best practices for an efficient, reliable, and safe natural gas supply chain to support the Nation’s energy independence.

• Enhanced Resource Utilization: Efficient, adaptable, and modular solutions that maximize the potential of all domestic natural gas resources
• Resilient Infrastructure Technologies: Innovative infrastructure technologies, materials, and equipment for eliminating product loss across the natural gas value chain
• System-Wide Performance Optimization: Novel sensor platforms, advanced computing, and predictive analysis technologies to ensure infrastructure-wide performance and integrity

Power, Fuels & Chemicals

Mission: Develop advanced energy systems that provide low-cost baseload power and products

• Advanced Gas Turbines: Improving performance of combustion, cooling, and system designs
• Advanced Energy Materials: Materials to enable higher temperature, higher efficiency turbine designs
• Advanced Refining Capabilities: Materials challenges for advanced refining

Last Updated: March 31, 2026