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Peter Kearl is co-founder and CTO of Qmast which is a Colorado-based company pioneering the use of the microwave technology to recover oil. Oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips are pouring resources into developing similar extraction techniques, which can be far less water- and energy-intensive than fracking. There is more than 4.285 trillion barrels of oil barrels of oil in the Green River Formation (2011 U.S. Geological Survey of resource in-place). Using oil shale cutoffs of potentially viable (15 gallons per ton) and high grade (25 gallons per ton), it is estimated that between 353 billion and 1.146 trillion barrels of...

n its efforts to minimize the widening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP will deploy a large structure in the next 6 to 8 days to capture leaking oil. Here's how it works. Called the Subsea Oil Recovery System, the 125-ton structure is designed to be placed over the largest source of oil leaking 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The system collects the leaking oil and pumps it through a funnel and pipe to a tanker at the surface, which stores it and ships the oil to shore.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — This country, famed for its development of sugar-cane-produced ethanol, soon could become one of the world's great oil powers — if its state-controlled energy company, Petrobras, can tap a potentially massive deposit beneath the South Atlantic Ocean. Experts believe the deposit, in the Tupi field 180 miles off the southeastern Brazilian coast, holds up to 8 billion barrels of light oil and natural gas. If confirmed, the deposit would be the largest petroleum find in seven years and would propel Brazil to the No. 12 position in oil reserves, after the United States and ahead...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels. In Indonesia, Chevron has applied the same technology to the giant Duri oil field, discovered in 1941, boosting production there to more than 200,000 barrels a day, up from 65,000 barrels in the mid-1980s. And in Texas, Exxon Mobil expects to double the amount of oil it extracts from its Means field,...

Experienced some sticker shock at the pump, have you? Anxious about the winter ahead and the cost of heat? Worldwide, the demand for oil continues to rise. At the same time, production is starting to wane and the search is on for new technologies that can retrieve more of the oil from known deposits. A new UMass Lowell invention for enhanced oil recovery shows promise in meeting this critical need. The Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center (MTTC) awarded a $25,000 grant to Chemistry Prof. David Ryan and Prof. Emeritus Dan Golomb of the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, to...