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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-119-47909-3
Cover image: All images supplied by Dreamstime.com; Rainbow Smoke: Nantapong Kittisubsiri | Oil Drop: Amnat Buakeaw | Trees: Christos Georghiou |
Leaves: Nadezda Kostina I Orange Flower Wreath: Darya Smirnova
Cover design by Kris Hackerott
This book is dedicated to the three creative geniuses that I have been blessed to call ‘my children’. They are: Elif Hamida Islam, Ali Omar Islam, and Jaan Sulaiman Islam.
M. R. Islam
Preface
“But what good will another round of corefloods and recovery curves do?”, quipped a Chemical Engineering professor over 3 decades ago. For a graduate student, whose PhD thesis (in Petroleum Engineering) is devoted to enhanced oil recovery in marginal reservoirs, that comment struck me with mixed emotions. My PhD supervisor was someone I would later characterize as academia’s most impactful petroleum engineering professor. The project that I was working on at the time was well funded by the government and industry consortium (translation: it was anything but a stale academic exercise). Even at its initial phase, the project was proving to be an academic masterpiece (it eventually broke the record for refereed publications for a PhD dissertation – at least for that University). Yet, this project was reduced to a set of ‘corefloods and recovery curves’.
I had immense respect for the chemical engineering professor (I still do – to this date), with whom I had a number of ground-breaking publications (that emerged from classwork), so I couldn’t even garner enough courage to confront him or ask for an explanation. Fast forward a 2 decades, I was giving a pep talk to industry and government delegates on sustainable engineering, upon which a mechanical engineering professor turned into a quasi-administrator, with no background in energy research, exclaimed, “Why are you focusing so much on society, where is engineering?” Thankfully, it was the government partner that quieted down the vociferous colleague, schooling him, “I thought sustainability is all about society…”
Fast forward another decade, I was lecturing on sustainable Enhanced Oil Recovery (the very same topic of this book) when I was ceremonially interrupted, “But where is the research in it, Professor Islam?” This time it was a physicist-turned materials engineer-turned Third World university administrator. Sadly, there was no government official to quiet him down, and to make it worse, a Third World-trained petroleum engineering professor chimed in, “but where does petroleum engineering come in this?” Clearly, they were expecting me to show more coreflood results and recovery curves!
Suffice it to say, in the last 3 decades, the engineering world has not moved a needle toward knowledge. Just like 3 decades ago, chemical engineers want you to implement chemicals without research, and demand that you just take their word for it. Materials engineers want you to focus on how to turn the valve on the well head, trusting them with the material engineering part. Sadly, petroleum engineers are then convinced that their research focus should include only yet another coreflood test and another way to do the material balance Type-curve fitting. University administrators meanwhile are strictly focused on keeping engineers caged within their puny research domain, tightly focussed on drilling a copious number of holes through the thinnest part of the research plank.
Today, I am no longer the wide-eyed graduate student wondering about the meaning of what professors have to say. It has been well over a decade that I pointedly asked ‘how deep is the collective ignorance of the ‘enlightened’ academia?1 Ignorance – as I figured within years of stepping into academic life – doesn’t frighten me, it emboldens my resolve to write more. I decided to write a book on enhanced oil recovery that doesn’t teach another way to measure the minimum miscibility pressure – a phenomenon that doesn’t occur in the field. Upon hearing this, my former graduate student (currently a university professor) said with utter desperation, “But, Dr. Islam, that’s the only thing we teach in EOR classes?” The state of academia is not strong – not even close. It is no surprise that this book is over 700 pages. It doesn’t shy away from calling out the hollowness of the incessant theories and academic mumbo jumbo that produced storm in teacups. Of course, criticism is easy but one must answer the question, “where is the beef?” For every question raised, a comprehensive solution is given after demonstrating how modern-day researchers have failed and why they have failed. The book makes no apology for making a full disclosure of what true sustainability should be – a far cry from the theme that has been shoved down the throat of the general public in the name of: sustainability should come with a price. The book shows, true sustainability is free – as in sunlight. Why should that surprise anyone? Didn’t we know best water (rain), best air (breeze), best cleanser (clay), best food ingredient (carbon dioxide), best energy (sunlight) – they are all free?
A society that has heard for centuries that chemicals are chemicals, photons are photons, CO2’ is CO2, murders are murders, all backed by Nobel prize winning scientists and social scientists, how do you even use the term ‘collective ignorance’ when ignorance is all that the society has offered? Why such thoughts will be tolerated, let alone nurtured by the same establishment that has made economics – the driver of the society the most paradoxical discipline, ignorance into bliss, science into hysteria, secular philosophy into cult-like beliefs,
