December 2019B
Company Spotlight
Sensytec
For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed Sensytec Co-Founder and CEO, Ody De La Paz, about their efforts to make the oil and gas industry more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. Sensytec is developing a smart cement technology that pairs a proprietary additive with data monitoring and analytics software to help companies enhance cement integrity by monitoring cement conditions near real-time. For more information on Sensytec, please visit www.sensytec.com.
Background: In 2012, the University of Houston was awarded a $2.6 million research grant from the Department of Energy to develop a cement additive that could be used to monitor the structural integrity of cement in real-time. In 2016, a group of entrepreneurs, led by Ody De La Paz, won a competition that enabled them to obtain an exclusive license to the intellectual property, and they formed Sensytec to finish R&D and commercialize the technology. Since then, the company has introduced its Smart Cement solution to the oil and gas industry as well as the construction industry.
Value Proposition: Sensytec’s proprietary cement additive is made up of very fine fibers that have conductive properties, enabling data to be collected on any type of stress that is applied to the cement structure. The technology gathers this data during both the curing process and throughout the entire life of the structure, which means it can detect if the cement does not set properly initially and if it deteriorates years later. Furthermore, Sensytec’s Smart Cement solution can identify and alert of these defects at very high sensitivities in real-time. This is critical, as cement generally fails at only 0.2% strain. The obvious incident that comes to mind of how Sensytec’s technology could have saved not only dollars, but lives, is Macondo, which resulted in the death of 11 workers and cost BP in excess of $60 billion to remediate.
Impediments to Industry Adoption: While the oil and gas industry is facing immense pressure from Wall Street and the public to be more ESG-focused, it is still very much a conservative industry with regard to adopting new technologies, especially those that could affect the structural integrity of a well. Sensytec has mitigated this by driving increased customer adoption through the following initiatives:
Attacking the Construction Industry: Concurrent to its efforts to commercialize the technology in the oil and gas industry, Sensytec has also targeted the construction industry as a key end market. Customers in the construction industry are able to test the technology in smaller structures first as well as being able to make apples-to-apples comparisons much more cost-effectively than customers in the oil and gas industry, which has allowed Sensytec to prove the concept much quicker and scale up to larger structures without as much hesitance from customers.
Drilling a Test Well: In an effort to prove the technology in conditions as close to a real well as possible, the Sensytec team drilled a test well in Houston that proved the technology worked on that scale. This has led to Equinor choosing to go forward with a pilot test program of their own using Sensytec’s Smart Cement solution, which is currently ongoing.
Closing Thoughts: As it continues to gather data over time, Sensytec will be able to offer access to a database that will help engineers across numerous industries better understand how different construction methods and cement structures hold up under various stress factors. We look forward to seeing how Sensytec’s technology can be further implemented in the oil and gas industry as well as other end markets to continue to make the world safer and more environmentally friendly.