Dr. Rui Zhang and collaborators awarded DOE grant

Dr. Rui Zhang, an assistant professor in the School of Geosciences and Department of Physics at UL Lafayette, have been awarded a major Department of Energy project “Tuscaloosa Marine Shale Laboratory” as CO-PI with the total funding of $9.7 million. The project is going to investigate the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale with about 7 billion barrels of unconventional oil reservoir crossing 28 parishes in central and south Louisiana.

The grant will fund the creation of a UL Lafayette-based Tuscaloosa Marine Shale Laboratory to “address critical gaps in our understanding of the TMS to enable cost-efficient and environmentally sound recovery from this unconventional liquid-rich shale play,” said Mokhtari, who is the leading PI of the project. It will include a team of researchers from the Los Alamos National Lab, New Mexico; Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla; the University of Oklahoma, Norman; and the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg. The multidisciplinary group will include engineers, geophysicists, geologists and an economic development specialists.

More detailed information about the project can be found in the below website.
https://www.louisiana.edu/news-events/news/20180118/97-million-grant-fue...