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
Initiatives
Oil and Gas Center of Excellence
HGEO established Centers of Excellence at each National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) campus aligned with key industry interests. The Centers of Excellence serve as dedicated hubs for collaboration, connecting stakeholders with laboratory capabilities, facilities, and multidisciplinary teams best aligned to support their goals. The Oil and Gas Center of Excellence is anchored at NETL’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania campus.
Latest News
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February 26, 2026
Resources
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Last Updated: July 1, 2026