Nanotechnology for the oil and gas industry - an overview of recent progress

Nanotechnology has brought about revolutionary innovations in many aspects of the oil and gas industry. Nanotechnology generates nanomaterials, which are natural or synthetic materials with at least one dimension at the nanoscale (1-100 nm). Among them, nanoparticles (NPs), in particular, have large surface areas and high volume concentrations. Given these dimensional effects, nanomaterials acquire unique mechanical, chemical, thermal, and magnetic properties and, therefore, have a superior performance than conventional micro and macro materials in a range of oil and gas field applications. Nanomaterials can also be custom functionalized by chemical modifications to meet specific technical requirements. In this review, the developments in the recent years concerning the research on nanotechnology in drilling, completion, reservoir protection, enhance-oil-recovery (EOR), sensing and imaging techniques, stimulation techniques in oil and gas migration and accumulation have been summarized. The aim of this paper was to provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific progress of nanotechnology in the oil and gas research areas, identifying the existing barriers and challenges, and evaluating the technical and economic prospects in this field.