A federally managed research program on offshore drilling has returned to full pace after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill forced officials to review program priorities.

The Department of Energy, which manages the research portfolio, slowed the program in 2010, after the Deepwater Horizon spill killed 11 workers and gushed crude into Gulf waters.

The private group managing the deepwater part of the program announced 13 research awards last week. That $56 million burst of spending is the group's largest since the spill.

The group, known as the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, or RPSEA, doled out five awards last year.

"After the blowout, because of public outcry, DOE decided that they wanted to make absolutely sure that the top priority focused on safety and environmental compliance," said James Pappas, vice president for ultra-deepwater at RPSEA. "It's not like we were not pursuing those, but that was not the No. 1 priority."

RPSEA's research fits into a larger program, established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, whose stated goal was to push the frontiers of oil and gas development. The unwieldy name -- the Ultra-Deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources Research Program -- showed the wide range of resources Congress wanted to develop.

From 2007 to 2010, Pappas said, that's essentially the focus RPSEA had. Then, after Deepwater Horizon, DOE increased its scrutiny of the research portfolio. He said proposals now take about 18 months to vet, which is why RPSEA is only now releasing funds it received in 2010.

The research is overseen by the Department of Energy but executed by academics and energy companies. The public-private partnership has been endowed with $400 million over eight years.

As far as last week's announcement, the federal government will chip in $35 million for the research, and industry will supply the remaining $21 million. Project participants include national labs, universities and energy companies like Halliburton, ConocoPhillips Co. and Chevron Corp., all of which are RPSEA members.

"The overriding theme is that every one of the projects has a safety or environmental component to it," Pappas said. "They all focus on technologies that, if they're developed and successful, will reduce risks associated with ultra-deepwater oil and gas activities."

He said some of that research directly targets drilling -- "the Macondo space, if you will" -- but not all of it does. One priority, for example, is to build lighter, stronger "risers": the tough steel pipes, thousands of feet long, that droop to the seafloor to convey the drilling tools.

Pressure challenge

From a technical point of view, offshore drilling presents a challenge. Drilling rigs can react like "a pendulum in reverse," Pappas said, as they are thrashed by sea forces even as they struggle to keep the drill bit straight.

All materials have to be ready to extend for miles, encountering chilly water before bashing through hot rock.

Then comes the biggest challenge: the immense pressure of rock that's sitting under the weight of the ocean.

Lawrence Cathles, a geology professor at Cornell University, said pressure has always been the main challenge in the Gulf -- from the way it attacks equipment to its ability to unleash gas and other materials. He said BP faced a particularly challenging well, and the drillers made a critical mistake when they permitted a pulse of methane into the rig, rather than around it.

"The challenge to drilling for oil and gas in the region has always been that you need to sort of predict when these overpressures are going to occur," he said.

The pressure challenge also shows up in the RPSEA research. One project, led by GE Global Research, aims to make it both cheaper and safer to develop marginal, high-pressure wells under the seafloor.

Today, a driller may want to tap a distant, ready-to-burst well. Under current practice, that involves placing pricey equipment there to withstand the pressure that's pushing on the oil.

Weston Griffin, a research scientist at GE Global Research, said it can be just as safe to put less beefy equipment there -- if it has sensors that can react to high pressure.

Smart, sensitive slurry

The University of Houston is leading a separate task: developing "smart" cement and clay that would make it safer to plug a newly drilled well on the ocean floor.

When preparing a well, drilling companies need both substances to finish the job -- to lubricate the drill bit, to carry rubble away and to affix the well to the floor.

It's hard enough transporting these materials down from the drilling rig, said Cumaraswamy Vipulanandan, a professor of civil engineering. But it gets even more complex under the seafloor, where drillers can't see what's happening and may not deliver enough sealant to close the well -- a potential risk.

Vipulanandan is working with Baker Hughes Inc., the oil field services company, to develop a sensitive slurry that will tell the well what it's up to. Certain materials send electric signals when compressed or heated, he said.

"It's like your skin. ... When someone touches you, you know where they're touching you. Your head, your hand, your leg," he said. Similarly, these cement-clay cocktails "can pick up any effect on them, any damage on them, right away."

Cathles, of Cornell, said it's beneficial to try to reduce the odds of an undersea accident, but it might be worth accepting that this kind of drilling comes with risks -- and that nations should be prepared.

For example, he said, the energy industry has stockpiled the kind of caps that BP had to develop as oil was gushing out of its well, so they are ready in case of a future spill.

Similarly, he said, there could be international agreements in which countries agree to rush equipment over in an emergency.

"We should just be a lot better prepared on what you should do when this type of accident occurs," he said.

Building the perfect drilling apparatus? Probably not possible, he said: "If you're alive, you're accepting risk."