Winners of GE, Statoil's Open Innovation Challenge

GE and Statoil’s Sustainability Collaboration announced today the five winners of its inaugural Open Innovation Challenge that focused on addressing the use of sand in unconventional operations.

Five Winning Technologies Address Alternatives for Sand in Shale Development: Sand plays a critical role in shale development and the hydraulic fracturing process.

The proppant is mixed with water and injected into a formation to “stimulate” or “prop open” the tiny fractures, enabling oil and natural gas to flow freely.
 
Well stimulation requires hundreds of truck trips to transport materials, which increases road wear and traffic as well as noise, dust and emissions.

By focusing on sand, the crowdsourcing Challenge looked for solutions that have the potential to reduce the environmental impacts on local communities, lessen emissions and make energy production more efficient.

“Proppant and water are the most trucked materials in hydraulic fracturing,” said Lars Høier, Senior Vice President, Research, Development & Innovation, Statoil ASA (STOHF).

“Therefore the overarching objective of the Sand Challenge was to reduce truck trips by addressing the use and composition of proppants. We were seeking both a lighter or more compact replacement for currently used proppants and/or new types of fluid or fluid additives that better suspend the proppant and are more efficient.  The end game is to develop a diverse portfolio of technologies that help reduce the environmental footprint, while enhancing operational efficiencies.”

The Powering Collaboration judge panel, consisting of both technical experts and management from both companies, evaluated more than 100 submissions from applicants from over 30 countries. 

“It is exciting and gratifying to note the quality and quantity of responses, and that many were from industries not related to energy,” stated Eric Gebhardt, Chief Technology Officer, GE Oil and Gas.

“The positive response and excellence of the winning submissions underscore the value of open innovation and the significance of industry collaboration to bring great ideas not only to the table, but to reality. We are eager to explore these collaborative solutions more as we move toward future testing, development and potential commercialization.”

The winners will each be awarded an initial cash prize of $25,000 USD, and will be eligible to receive additional funding from an available discretionary prize pool of $375,000 USD for potential development or commercialization upon meeting certain additional conditions.