Research Professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG)
Dr. Andrey Bakulin, Ph.D. (Co-PI), is a Research Professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at UT Austin. In his current role, he co-leads the TCCS IA alongside Prof. Sergey Fomel, with a focus on land seismic and advancing monitoring technologies, while developing new instrumentation and techniques crucial for supporting the energy transition. Andrey also leads the H2 injection field test at the Devine site, conducted by the GeoH2 consortium at BEG, focusing on hydrogen storage and innovative monitoring technologies.
With over 25 years of industry experience, Andrey’s work in reservoir characterization and monitoring has been pivotal. At Shell, he led Virtual Source monitoring initiatives using downhole sensors and spearheaded tube-wave and real-time completion monitoring projects, emphasizing cost-effective in-well solutions with fiber-optic sensors. At Saudi Aramco, he directed the seismic monitoring program, including feasibility studies and successful field monitoring of a CO2-EOR pilot in a carbonate reservoir. He played a key role in designing and demonstrating the first industrial hybrid monitoring system with 1,000 buried sensors and oversaw the 4D processing and interpretation.
Andrey also invented and field-tested the smart DAS uphole acquisition system, featuring vertical arrays on a single fiber—an innovative design to be employed in major onshore CCS projects.