There is one insurmountable bottleneck in the supply of hydrocarbons to the market: the relatively tiny area of the well/reservoir interface through which all recovered hydrocarbons must flow. Usually less than a football field in area, during its lifetime the billions of microscopic pores in this area must allow the flow of many years’ worth of production, amounting to over a million barrels depending on the reservoir area being drained.

Any reduction in the relative or absolute permeability will have the knock on effect of not only delaying hydrocarbon production but also potentially reducing recoverable reserves. No wonder then, that so much effort has been spent on ways to bypass this bottleneck, whether through perforating, matrix or fracture stimulation.

But what new technologies are on the horizon to improve the wellbore\reservoir interface, whether through increased inflow area, improved flow geometry or enhanced reservoir permeability? Given the current difficulties for “conventional” stimulation methods, the time is ripe for the development of alternative technologies.