Profile picture for user Sean Trotter
Sean Trotter
Vice President - Engineering & EPC Projects
Saulsbury Industries

Sean Trotter, P.E. serves as the Vice President of EPC – Engineering/Major Projects for Saulsbury. He is responsible for overall project performance and execution, project estimating and proposal development, and budgeting and staffing for the engineering and project management operations for Saulsbury’s EPC projects.
Sean joined Saulsbury as a process engineer in 2010 after graduating summa cum laude from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering. Sean previously held several roles within the process engineering group including Process Engineering Manager and Director of Process Engineering before assuming his current position in January 2018. Sean has been involved in over 35 of Saulsbury’s major EPC projects in the midstream gas processing, compression, and CO2 industries in varying capacities since joining the company. Sean is a licensed professional engineer in six states and was awarded the Young Engineer of the Year for the Permian Basin Chapter of TSPE in 2017.
Outside of the workplace, Sean’s additional leadership roles include serving on the Board of Directors for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), the Odessa College Business Leadership Advisory Board, the UTPB Engineering Advisory Board, and an advisory board and founding member of The Bridge Methodist Church in Odessa. Sean is also a member of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers (TSPE).

Posts by Sean Trotter
- Blog

The Air That I Breathe, Part 4 - Supercritical CO2 for Long-Haul Piping and Enhanced Oil Recovery

Author Sean Trotter

The vast potential for permanently storing carbon dioxide underground by using it for enhanced oil recovery can only be realized if produced or captured CO2 can be economically transported long distances via pipeline. And the only way that can happen is if the CO2 is compressed into a “supercritical” or “dense-phase” fluid — a state that is somewhat compressible like a gas but flows and can be pumped like a liquid. When CO2 is in a supercritical state, much more of it can economically flow through a pipeline to the producing field. And when it gets there, the dense-phase CO2 can be injected into an oil production zone, where it has the unique ability to flow through permeable rock formations, bond with and “swell” trapped oil molecules, and free the oil to move to the production well, then up to the surface. Given that CO2-based EOR is destined to become a much more significant activity in the energy industry, it’s time for a fun-filled review of the thermodynamics of fluids as it relates to the transportation of CO2 and its use in the production of crude oil. (Wait! Don’t leave! This will be easy to follow! We promise!) Today, we continue our series on the rapidly evolving CO2 market and why it matters to crude oil producers.