The International Centre for Carbonate Reservoirs (ICCR) is the largest dedicated academic research group in Europe working on carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs. Over 30 researchers conduct research across the full range of geological, geophysical, and reservoir engineering challenges related to exploring, characterising, and modelling carbonate reservoirs.
ICCR was established in 2010 with funding from The Scottish Funding Council and is now fully funded by Petrobras and BG Group. ICCR was formed as a strategic research partnership between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh. Today, University of Oxford is also a member institution of ICCR.
At ICCR we undertake strategic fundamental and applied research to enhance recovery from complex carbonate reservoirs. Carbonate are highly heterogeneous across all length scales, and so essential to this endeavour is to understand the fundamental controls on carbonate porosity and permeability evolution, the prediction of reservoir quality using geophysical data, and the appropriate upscaling of porosity, permeability, and the physics of multiphase flow.
The ICCR philosophy is to tackle these complex and interdisciplinary issues by the integration of geological, multi-scale physics, and reservoir engineering expertise across all length scales in order to make a step-change in enhancing recovery by delivering novel and practical tools that enhance and leverage existing industry workflows. Such seamless integration gives ICCR both a powerful capability and effective mechanism to feed geological observations and constraints into an integrated project network to produce quantitative reservoir properties and engineering strategies. This adaptability allows for particular focus on emerging carbonate provinces such as the carbonate reservoirs offshore Brazil.