The Natural Gas Initiative examines the dynamic, multifaceted questions raised by the tremendous growth in natural gas production by focusing the efforts of Stanford’s faculty, researchers, and students in six key areas: Resource Development; Environmental Impacts and Climate Change; Uses of Natural Gas; Global Markets and Finance; Policy and Regulatory Reform; and Geopolitical Impacts.

SCRF was initiated in 1988 to further the development of techniques for forecasting reservoir performance and for integrating geological, geophysical and reservoir engineering data. The SCRF group performs paradigm-changing research in the field of geostatistics and numerical reservoir modeling. We are not bound by the limited extent of project-based research with its short-term deadlines and limited scope. This long-term perspective has lead to revolutionary changes in reservoir modeling, amongst which: the introduction of stochastic simulation in reservoir modeling, GSLIB as a standard geostatistical software package, the advent of multiple-point geostatistics, practical solutions for large-scale inverse problems with geological constraints, an open-source software termed S-GEMS, and techniques for modeling uncertainty. The funding mechanism of SCRF has created a long-term think-tank where a group of faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, visiting scholars and industry experts come together to tackle problems of first-order importance in quantitative modeling of space-time varying phenomena and their applications in reservoir modeling.

To address the variety of scientific and operational issues associated with the managing the risk posed by induced and triggered earthquakes.

The Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) is an industry-funded academic consortium whose purpose is to improve the theory and practice of constructing 3-D and 4-D images of the earth from seismic echo soundings. Although most of our research is targeted at improvements in the geophysical survey contracting industry, about half of our sponsors and alumni are in the petroleum industry because we focus on overcoming technological limitations of the geophysical survey industry. SEP pioneered innovations in migration imaging, velocity estimation, dip moveout and slant stack. Today our focus is on 3-D seismic applications such as velocity estimation, wavefield-continuation prestack migration, multidimensional image estimation, and 4-D (time-lapse) reservoir monitoring. Besides 3-D reflection seismic data, we undertake small 2-D imaging projects with geophysical data of all kinds. The diversity of applications exercises our judgment and skill at combining fundamentals of statistical signal theory, optimization theory, numerical analysis, and wave propagation theory, and this has led us to numerous improvements and some breakthroughs. We organize our research to facilitate technology transfer by using a formal method of makefile rules. With these, most of our research results are verified by someone other than the original researcher. Research progress reports at least three years old and all PhD theses are made available to the public through our web site.

The SRB Program is an Industrial Affiliates program in the Geophysics Department at Stanford University. SRB is the acronym for The Stanford Rock Physics & Borehole Geophysics Project.

Reservoir simulation entails the development and implementation of efficient computational techniques for the accurate numerical solution of the equations governing multicomponent, multiphase flow in porous subsurface formations. It also includes the detailed modeling of wellbore flow, accurate representation of advanced wells, and integration of the reservoir model with production facilities. Our recent research additionally targets the development of capabilities required for modeling long-term carbon storage and in-situ upgrading of energy resources. We work in virtually all aspects of reservoir simulation, and our research program is constantly evolving to meet current challenges and student interests of.