2. Once upon a time …….
GeoPetro made a little puppet
out of a very new material and
called him Nanocchio
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
3. After Geopetro finished Nanocchio , he fell
asleep and after nightfall , the Blue Fairy* came
to visit Nanocchio and promised to make
Nanocchio a real Nanoreporter , but only if he
would promise to be a good nanoreporter, and
only report the truth about all the chemistry,
temperature, and pressure conditions in the
reservoirs she would send him to.
* No, the Blue
Fairy did not
work for
Schlumberger
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
4. Otherwise, Nanocchio’s Nose would grow
and grow, until he would get stuck between
the rocks of the reservoir, and then he would
never be able to return to the surface.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
5. Geopetro’s dream was to be able to learn about
reservoirs with nanoreporters, so the Blue Fairy
sent Nanocchio into a time machine to visit
some reservoirs in the future, by making him
30,000 times smaller than a strand of human
hair, so he could get all over the place within
the reservoir and collect information.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
7. Nanocchio could not imagine how
different things were in the future,
there were new materials being used
everywhere, harder ones, lighter ones,
they could avoid corrosion
completely. There were filtration
systems for water and all sorts of
other fluids, never mind all the new
coatings and paints, and all their new
colours. This all made working
underwater much easier.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
10. Nanocchio also saw that there were new chemical
reactions based on new catalysts, and the whole
way the reservoir was controlled. The whole
oilfield was like a giant robotic system, and all the
chokes opened and closed intelligently, to
optimize production. All the equipment could talk
and say to the engineers about how tired they
were, or if they needed servicing. Nanocchio was
amazed, but remembered that he had to go down
into one of the wells and report on the reservoirs’
characteristics.
Nanocchio was worried that no one would believe
him !
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
11. So, Nanocchio went down into the first well he
could find and into the reservoir formation,
and started to make his way through the rocks.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
12. Nanocchio found out that he was not alone as a
nanoreporter, however, the other
nanoreporters looked very very different, they
all came in nano-sizes, but they came in very
many shapes, there were nanospheres and
nanotubes, and lots more, in fact, there were
millions of them, and they were all gathering
Information.
Oil
Water
Sulfur
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
13. Nanocchio found they were all busy finding ways
to recover more oil out of the reservoirs, and
working out what is going on inside the reservoir.
Things like understanding fluid migration , or
pinpointing locations for emulsifiers and foams.
Nanocchio also found that they made their way
along the oil/water boundary to help delineate
these contact zones and migration fronts. He also
found they could be useful in carbon capture as
metal organic frameworks, as new materials ,and
could also be useful in oil saturation
determination. Nanocchio was careful not to
report anything false because he did not want to
disappoint the Blue Fairy or Geopetro’s dream.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
14. Then all of a sudden as he was going through
the reservoir he came across lots of hungry
bacteria and they scared him so much because
he was so small and had to hide behind the
rocks, not to get eaten himself. This was a
microbial environment and required a different
way to recover oil from the reservoir. The
bacteria were fed and they manipulated
structure and function to accomplish their
goals. This is known as Biotechnology.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
16. Nanocchio finally came across another well
and could make his way back up to the surface,
where he saw many different robots of all sorts,
automatically working away, moving all sorts
of things around and going into dangerous
places, so no one would get hurt. Everyone
was networked, it was almost like everyone
could read each other’s minds
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
17. Nanocchio was now happy he had so much to
report, so he went back in the time machine, to
go home to the Blue Fairy and to Geopetro, to
become a real live nanoreporter, and to let
Geopetro know that his dream would come
true. Geopetro prayed for Nanocchio’s return.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
18. Geopetro was so happy when
Nanocchio returned home they
danced and danced !!
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
19. Today nanotechnology is still in a formative phase-
-not unlike the condition of computer science in
the 1960s or biotechnology in the 1980s. Yet it is
maturing rapidly.
Between 1997 and 2005, investment in nanotech
research and development by governments around
the world soared from $432 million to about $4.1
billion, and corresponding industry investment
exceeded that of governments by 2005.
By 2020, products incorporating nanotech will
contribute approximately $1 trillion to the global
economy. About two million workers will be
employed in nanotech industries, and three times
that many will have supporting jobs.
By Garry Kolafa, ESI
