U of S Geochemist Wins $20,000 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award

Posted October 19, 2000


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Wednesday, October 18, 2000 2000-10-03-OTHER

U of S Geochemist Wins $20,000 Petro-Canada
Young Innovator Award

Finding oil could get easier for petroleum companies thanks to the promising
work of a University of Saskatchewan geologist who today was awarded a
$20,000 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award.

Professor Chris Holmden is researching a new way to trace crude oil
discoveries back to their original source rock, information that could
enable companies to explore more effectively for new oil deposits. He is
taking existing trace metal rock-dating techniques and applying them to the
dating of oil deposits, something that has not been done before.

"Professor Holmden is one of our finest young researchers whose innovative
work has already been recognized with two Canada Foundation for Innovation
grants," said U of S Vice-President Research Michael Corcoran. "He?s an
excellent example of the kind of researcher that Petro-Canada Young
Innovator Award program is designed to encourage."

Petro-Canada Terminal Manager Bruce Worton said, "Professor Holmden?s work
could provide a powerful new exploration tool. This award is a tribute to
the quality of his work and we are grateful for the contribution he?s making
both to this university and to our country."

The annual U of S award draws on a $100,000 donation Petro-Canada made to
the U of S in 1996 in response to the university?s First and Best National
Campaign. The program aims to assist young faculty (those within six years
of their initial appointment) with their innovative research programs.

Holmden?s research involves a technique known as "trace metal isotope
fingerprinting" that could provide new knowledge about the origin and
evolution of petroleum in sedimentary rock.

He explains that petroleum is formed from rocks which are rich in organic
matter. Heat converts the organic matter into liquid crude oil which is
forced upwards through pores in the source rock. When the crude oil
migrates, it can accumulate in underground reservoirs hundreds of kilometres
away.

Holmden?s work starts from the premise that crude oil expelled from source
rock will have the same composition of trace metal isotopes as the source
rock itself. The relative amounts of various isotopes of a given element
constitute an "isotopic fingerprint."

The idea is to try to match the isotopic fingerprint of oil samples from a
producing well with samples from rocks which have been identified as
potential petroleum sources, based on geological knowledge of the age
distribution of petroleum-bearing rocks on the Prairies. From this match,
inferences can be made about the oil migration pathways and potential areas
to drill for new oil discoveries.

"Once you know something about how the oil went along a pathway, finding
more oil sources is like joining dots and finding a likely pathway to more
oil," says Holmden.

Holmden thinks knowledge of how certain radioactive trace metal isotopes
(such as uranium) decay in petroleum to other "daughter" isotopes (such as
lead) can be used to date oil migration from the source rock and also to
pinpoint when the expulsed oil then became trapped in underground
reservoirs. Conventional petroleum tracing techniques cannot date the
entrapment age of the oil.

Holmden?s work will be done in a new multi-million-dollar U of S lab
facility which includes a state-of-the art trace metal "clean lab" that is
virtually free of airborne contaminants and three new mass spectrometers
which will be used to measure various trace elements and date the oil
samples. Before the clean lab was built this year, analyses of such low
concentrations of elements could not be done without risk of contamination
from airborne contaminants.

Holmden received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 1995. He has
published 21 refereed and non-refereed research papers and has received
grants from NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council), the
Canada Foundation for Innovation, and PotashCorp.

Candidates for the award are nominated by their departments. Selection of
the recipient is made by a committee chaired by the Vice-President of
Research. Criteria include overall research promise of the individual, the
degree of innovation of the work, and the quality of the proposal.

The awards program was set up in 1995 due to growing concern by universities
that some of Canada?s most prominent young scholars were leaving the country
to conduct their research elsewhere. Since then, Petro-Canada has invested
more than $4 million at 20 universities, colleges, research institutes and
major health institutes. There have been about 28 award recipients
nationally.

For more information, contact:

Professor Chris Holmden
Associate Professor, Geological Sciences
(306) 966-5697 Phone
(306) 966-8593 Fax
chris.holmden@usask.ca


or

Kathryn Warden
Communications Officer
Office of the Vice-President Research
(306) 966-2506 Phone
(306) 966-2411 Fax
kathryn.warden@usask.ca