UNBC researcher Dr. Wenbo Zheng will be getting a bit of a financial boost in his research related to natural resources.
A federal-provincial fund of $312,393 would go towards creating a rock mechanics lab, and support ongoing research into rock formations subjected to engineered stimulations like hydraulic fracturing and injections as part of natural resource extraction.
Dr. Zheng talks about why this research is important for northern B.C..
“Northern B.C. contributes to over 50 per cent of the Canadian natural gas production and over 90 per cent of the natural gas production in B.C., and this is very important especially aligned with the emerging energy sector in B.C. and Canada.”
One of the challenges addressed in the research is hydraulic fracturing, which has been linked small scale earthquakes in the province’s northeast.
“There has been a lot of drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and there have been many micro-earthquakes in the region.” said Dr. Zheng
“In this case, what we’re trying to do is to conduct laboratory testing to see how rock fracks and then perform numerical simulations.”
The research will be done over a five year period with 10 undergraduate students, ten exchange PhD students and eight graduate students.
More information can be found on UNBC’s website here.
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