Petroleum Development Laboratory • (907) 474-7366

The Petroleum Development Laboratory (PDL) was established in 1984 as a research branch of the School of Mineral Engineering. It conducts practical research to develop and improve technology that will enhance recovery of Alaska’s petroleum and natural gas resources. The research assists industry and state agencies in these efforts. PDL’s goal is to transfer information from laboratory and field experiments to engineers who can apply it to problems in the oil fields.

PDL explores various aspects of enhanced oil recovery research, including the production of heavy oil through thermal recovery and miscible oil displacement.

Research programs include secondary (waterflooding) and enhanced oil recovery processes, a comprehensive study of Alaska’s oil and gas reservoirs, development of thermal recovery projects to initiate production from the Ugnu and West Sak fields, miscible flooding methods for tertiary recovery from Prudhoe Bay, and estimation of gas hydrate reserves in northern Alaska.