Dow Oil & Gas, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, recently introduced three new product lines to the exploration and production markets.

The products include the Embark line for exploration, the Accent line for production and the Elevate line for EOR (enhanced oil recovery).

Elaborating on the new products, Craig Arnold, general manager, Dow Oil and Gas, says: “The first product in our line for exploration is Embark Rheology Modifier 160, which is designed to protect equipment and enhance drilling operations in high-temperature, high-pressure drilling environments, serving to increase production and reduce operating costs.

“Our production chemistry line now includes Accent Traditional and Traceable Scale Inhibitors, which are innovative polymers designed to help assure flow cost effectively in producing wells.” 

The company has also broadened its well-known Romax Water Clarification line to include innovative new polymers to help improve efficiency in oil-water separation, particularly in EOR applications.

The first product in its EOR line is Elevate CO2 EOR Conformance Solution, which is designed to help producers reach and recover more oil from existing wells, while simultaneously reducing operating expenditures and overcoming well-known challenges associated with CO2 EOR.

Arnold states that Dow has shifted its business portfolio toward higher-value, higher-margin products, which support its strategic goal of creating value for its stockholders and growth for its customers.

Committed to the Middle East
In 2009, the Middle East and Africa represented 22 per cent of Dow Oil and Gas’ sales. “Customers in this region are critical to our success, and we remain as committed as ever to the Middle East market,” says Arnold.

Dow has partnered with leading regional players, including Saudi Aramco and Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) of Kuwait to develop joint venture companies that capitalise on the strategic geographic location of the Middle East.

“These state-of-the-art petrochemical complexes are helping transform the regional petrochemical landscape while also supporting regional employment objectives and economic diversification agendas. As an example, one of our joint ventures with PIC, Equate Petrochemical Company, is the largest private employer of Kuwaiti nationals in the petrochemicals industry in Kuwait. In fact, we recently expanded our partnership with PIC with the inauguration of the Equate II facility, comprising new Aromatics, Styrene and Olefins II plants,” says Arnold.

“We see continued growth through our joint ventures, as well as our growing solutions portfolio across a number of industries. Most recently, we launched the new Dow Construction Chemicals business in the Middle East. Dow Oil & Gas and other Dow businesses provide tailored solutions to meet the infrastructure and transportation needs of the rapidly growing and diversifying economies of the Middle East.”

Arnold: forging strong partnerships

Dow says it is also supporting the growing focus on developing knowledge economies. It entered into a strategic partnership with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) to establish a joint research framework. Dow is a founding member of Kaust’s Industrial Collaboration Programme (KICP), which is designed to leverage industrial collaboration to elevate the research experience in Saudi Arabia. Dow has also announced plans to jointly design and build the Dow Middle East R&D Centre, which will represent its first R&D footprint in the Middle East.

Product development is a key focus area for the company. “Dow Oil & Gas knows that securing a sustainable energy future is one of the world’s greatest challenges,” says Arnold. “We understand the changing face of today’s oilfield, and we are committed to providing relevant, innovative solutions to meet our customers’ ever-evolving needs. Our proven experience in polymer chemistry – combined with the use of state-of-the-art, high-throughput synthesis and applications testing and knowledge of materials science – will allow us to accelerate development of these innovative solutions for the oilfield.”

In this region, Dow Oil & Gas serves the needs of customers across the exploration, production, enhanced oil recovery, refining, gas processing and gas transmission markets.

Commenting on market trends, he says: “The world is constantly demanding more energy. Fossil fuels still dominate as an energy source, but today’s technology can only extract about 50 per cent of the oil in a reservoir. The oil that could be easily accessed in the past is gone; wells must be drilled deeper, horizontally, and under higher temperature and pressure. Regulations regarding emissions and contaminants have gotten stricter, while starting concentrations in oil and gas have gotten higher.”

Dow involvement in region
The company is involved in developing answers to the growing challenges of the oil and gas industry including drilling fluids for extreme environments, stimulation materials to increase production in higher pressure wells, advanced production chemistry, CO2 enhanced oil recovery conformance solutions, amine solvents to meet specific requirements in treating oil and natural gas and advanced CO2 capture technology. 

In the Middle East, the company has supplied to world-scale gas projects in Qatar and the UAE. It supplied Ucarsol and Selexol specialty solvents to multiple LNG trains at RasGas and QatarGas, as well as Gasco and Dolphin gas plants. Dow is actively involved in future gas, LNG, and refinery projects throughout the Gulf region.

Examples of the many opportunities Dow Oil & Gas is focusing on include, for example, the development of advanced stimulation materials, additional enhanced oil recovery solutions, more drilling fluids for extreme environments, and advanced amines for acid gas removal.

Dow Oil & Gas believes that the energy industry in the GCC will strongly build on their long track record as the leading global supplier of oil, gas and feedstocks and that technology development will play a key role as hydrocarbons are extracted from more challenging reservoirs while total recovery is increased. In addition to hydrocarbon-focused efforts, investments in solar energy, clean carbon projects and local universities will benefit other regions, as technologies are proven by globally respected organisations on a large scale. “The low-cost position of the GCC energy industry is ideally leveraged to growing more differentiated downstream manufacturing for local and global needs.   Dow Oil and Gas is a strong partner for enabling success of the GCC in these diverse areas,” says Arnold.