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
Divisions
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
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
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
Latest News
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February 26, 2026
Resources
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Last Updated: March 31, 2026