Durangoans Rob Lander and Linda Bonnell have carved out a niche for themselves in the oil and gas industry as researchers and consultants helping companies determine if it is economically viable to drill in sandstone.

The two founded their company, Geocosm, about 17 years ago, and they split their time between research funded through a consortium and consulting for specific companies.

None of their work involves the San Juan Basin, but they chose to move to Durango four years ago from Austin for the quality of life.

They have their offices in their garage. About 10 percent of the workforce in La Plata County is home-based, like Geocosm, according to the La Plata County Economic Alliance.

Lander attributes the company’s success to Geocosm’s consortium, because it can focus on long-term research for companies.

“I think that’s why we’re surviving despite the fact that the oil industry is hurting right now,” Lander said.

The two were inspired to start a consortium after seeing how well it worked for one of their professors.

Twenty companies fund the consortium’s research through annual subscriptions. The research is used to develop software.

Companies use results from the software to predict how easily oil can be extracted from sandstone, and it can also help companies avoid drilling in areas where it wouldn’t be economically viable, Bonnell said.

Consulting with Geocosm can also help companies save money, which is especially important now that the cost of oil is down.

Paying for a study is a tiny fraction of what it would cost to drill a well that would come up dry, he said.

Geocosm works on expensive deep-water wells, like those in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Norway.

The company doesn’t work with hydraulic fractured wells because those tend to be fairly cheap to drill.

“There is not so much of an incentive to do the science and do a rigorous job ahead of time to make sure that you are increasing your chances for success,” he said.

Their work has come a long way since they left a Norwegian research institute and started Geocosm.

When they started, the math needed to predict what kind of sandstone you might find in certain locations didn’t exist, so they developed some of the ideas and concepts.

In the last three years, they have started working on 3-D modeling, which is an avenue for them to do more experiments, Bonnell said.

The two worked with a Fort Lewis College student to help develop the software.

He created sand packs for them, by sifting through sand to sort it by grain size and then mixing it based on a set recipe. He used different types of sand as well as different shaped sand particles.

This was fundamental research that hadn’t been done for 40 years.

It also created a starting point that could be used as a basis for computer simulations, Bonnell said.

The models help the company see how the sand transforms over time when exposed to heat and pressure.

Right now the simulations take months because there are so many calculations involved.

A single simulation can have 5,000 grains and each grain can have 20,000 points, Lander said.

The company employs three full-time software developers and three part-time mathematicians.

Lander and Bonnell shied away from becoming a big company because they enjoy doing the science themselves.

“What’s important is that you actually love what you do, if you do something that’s really fun and interesting and pay the bills, then you know, that’s far more important than making a lot of money and being miserable,” Lander said.

mshinn@durangoherald.com