Improved Oil and Gas Recovery and Produced Water Management Technologies

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) will seek proposals for specific research and development (R&D) projects to improve recovery efficiency from unconventional oil and natural gas reservoirs and to advance technologies for the treatment of flowback and produced water from oil and natural gas production operations. Despite increasing energy for demand, recovery efficiency for oil and natural gas from unconventional reservoirs can average less than 10 percent. This NOFO will enable rapid field deployment of a variety of novel technologies and processes related to improving primary and enhanced recovery with the goal of significantly improving resource recovery and accelerating industry uptake. This NOFO will also support the field testing and validation of water treatment technologies of produced water from oil and natural gas production operations to avoid deep well injection and potential issues with induced seismicity and interaction with underground sources of drinking water.

The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a recipient or subrecipient of this NOFO: • Institutions of higher education (as defined in Title 20 U.S.C. § 1001) • For-profit organizations • Nonprofit organizations • State and local government entities • Indian Tribes (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, 25 U.S.C. § 5304)