CO2-EOR

Program Goal Enable enhanced recovery of the nation's previously non-recoverable oil resources. DOE's program focuses on evaluating possible candidate locations for future CO2 injection enhanced oil recovery, utilizing CO2 from industrial sources, as well as geologic sources.

Crude oil development and production in U.S. oil reservoirs can include up to three distinct phases: primary, secondary, and enhanced oil recovery. During primary recovery, the natural pressure of the reservoir or gravity drive oil into the wellbore, combined with artificial lift techniques (such as pumps) which bring the oil to the surface. But only about 10 percent of a reservoir's original oil in place is typically produced during primary recovery. Secondary recovery techniques to the field's productive life generally by injecting water or gas to displace oil and drive it to a production wellbore, resulting in the recovery of 20 to 40 percent of the original oil in place.

However, with much of the easy-to-produce oil already recovered from U.S. oil fields, producers have attempted several enhanced oil recovery (EOR), techniques that offer prospects for ultimately producing 30 to 60 percent, or more, of the reservoir's original oil in place. 

Three major categories of enhanced oil recovery have been found to be commercially successful to varying degrees:

• Thermal recovery, which involves the introduction of heat such as the injection of steam to lower the viscosity, or thin, the heavy viscous oil, and improve its ability to flow through the reservoir. Thermal techniques account for over 50 percent of U.S. enhanced oil recovery production, primarily in California.
  

• Gas injection, which uses gases such as natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide that expand in a reservoir to push additional oil to a production wellbore, or other gases that dissolve in the oil to lower its viscosity and improves its flow rate. Gas injection accounts for nearly 50 percent of enhanced oil recovery production in the United States.
  

• Chemical injection, which can involve the use of long-chained molecules called polymers to increase the effectiveness of waterfloods, or the use of detergent-like surfactants to help lower the surface tension that often prevents oil droplets from moving through a reservoir. Chemical techniques account for less than one percent of U.S. enhanced oil recovery production.

Each of these techniques has been hampered by its relatively high cost and, in some cases, by the unpredictability of its effectiveness.

CO2 Injection Offers Considerable Potential Benefits

The enhanced oil recovery technique that is attracting the most new market interest is carbon dioxide CO2-EOR. First tried in 1972 in Scurry County, Texas, CO2 injection has been used successfully throughout the Permian Basin of West Texas and eastern New Mexico, and is now being pursued to a limited extent in Kansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Alaska, and Pennsylvania.

Until recently, most of the CO2 used for enhanced oil recovery has come from naturally-occurring reservoirs. But new technologies are being developed to produce CO2 from industrial applications such as natural gas processing, fertilizer, ethanol, and hydrogen plants in locations where naturally occurring reservoirs are not available. One demonstration at the Dakota Gasification Company's plant in Beulah, North Dakota is producing CO2 and delivering it by a new 204-mile pipeline to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada, for CO2 injection there. Encana, the field's operator, is injecting the CO2 to extend the field's productive life, hoping to add another 25 years and as much as 130 million barrels of oil that might otherwise have been abandoned.

Current CO2-EOR Operations

In January 2010, over 48 million metric tons per year of CO2 are used for enhanced oil recovery. Of this total, about 25 percent (12 million tons) is anthropogenic in origin i.e., produced by human activities such as oil refining or fertilizer manufacturing (Trinity 2006). The rest is extracted from naturally occurring deposits.

The CO2 that is used to increase oil production via enhanced oil recovery is an expensive commodity, and for this reason oil companies are motivated to ensure that up to three quarters of the CO2 that is injected remains underground in the oil field. The amount of CO2 sequestered is highly dependent on whether the field is blown-down following any CO2 operations. Further research and development in this area is expected to improve the storage rate to close to 100 percent. Estimates made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) show that depleted oil and gas wells in the United States and Canada have the potential to sequester over 82 billion tons of carbon dioxide in total.

A turning-point in CO2-EOR advances is a project funded by DOE in the Hall-Gurney field in Kansas that seeks to demonstrate this technology's time has come - providing energy, economic and environmental benefits. A companion project underway in the Hall-Gurney field involves testing the feasibility of 4-D high resolution seismic monitoring of CO2 injection in thin, relatively shallow mature carbonate reservoirs.  Incorporating such time-lapsed monitoring data into CO2-EOR programs could dramatically improve the efficiency and economics of using the technology in many Midcontinent fields.

New breakthroughs in CO2-EOR recovery technology could further enhance oil recovery in Texas and other oil producing states. One DOE-industry partnership project is investigating gravity-stable CO2 injection in the Permian Basin in West Texas, where the goal is to increase oil recovery in the Scurry Canyon Reef field.

DOE Basin-Oriented CO2-EOR Assessments

In February 2006, a series of technical reports released by the Department on Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy highlight the significant potential for state-of-the-art and advanced oil recovery technologies to significantly contribute to the development of the large volume of remaining undeveloped domestic oil resources in the United States.  Ten basin-oriented assessments- four new, three updated and three previously released- estimate that 89 billion barrels of additional oil from currently "trapped oil" (also referred to as "stranded" oil) resources in ten U.S. regions could be technically recoverable by applying state-of-the-art CO2-EOR technologies.

Benefits of CO2-EOR

CO2-EOR is a promising method of carbon capture and sequestration for a number of reasons. 

First, the geologic structures that originally contained the oil and natural gas should also permanently contain the injected CO2, provided the integrity of the structures is maintained. From seismic studies, the geologic structure and physical properties of many oil and gas fields are well understood. This, combined with the vast amount of industry experience with gas-injection enhanced oil recovery, provides a knowledge base from which to start researching the sequestration implications of CO2-EOR. 

Another benefit of CO2-EOR for sequestration purposes is the widespread distribution of depleted and operating oil and gas fields, making it likely that an oil field is near a CO2 source. 

Finally, carbon capture and sequestration from CO2-EOR projects can create offsets resulting in trades in the emerging greenhouse gas market. Many companies are now offering these services and financial transactions to sequester carbon dioxide emissions. One example includes the "forward purchase" of 6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions (equivalent) and the company then optioned for an additional 3 million tons of CO2 equivalent that resulted from geologic sequestration projects in Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, where the carbon dioxide emissions would otherwise have been vented by the natural gas processing plants used for enhanced oil recovery.


Enhanced Oil Recovery Activities

CO2 is specifically processed for most of the 82 projects utilizing CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (Moritis, 2006). The CO2 for these projects is mined from naturally occurring, high-pressure deposits that occur close enough to oil fields to make transmission economically feasible. The following table lists DOE-sponsored projects that utilize anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions for EOR and additionally promote greenhouse gas emissions reductions, since this CO2 would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere.

Enhanced Oil Recovery Benefits

Increasing the use of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) also ends our need for buying oil from overseas while getting Americans back to work recovering America's oil instead of sending our dollars overseas for the oil we need.  Increasing the use of Enhanced Oil Recovery in the U.S. significantly reduces America's debt and foreign trade imbalance.  The Muslim oil countries that we are buying are oil from simply don't like us or America's policies.  That's why many of the Muslim oil countries we are buying our oil from then take our dollars we send them for the oil we need, and make bombs and bullets and send our boys back in body bags. That has got to stop. No more American soldiers dying for foreign oil.  Our troops are over there because we need their oil, yet we have 400 billion barrels of oil that are left behind, as companies like ExxonMobil pull out of the oil wells they drilled here, after they get the "easy oil" out of the ground, leaving 40% - 70% of the OOIP (original oil in place) still in the ground. That's what Enhanced Oil Recovery is all about, getting the rest of America's oil out of the ground.  

At $100/barrel, Enhanced Oil Recovery represents a $24 Trillion market opportunity here in the U.S.!  At $80.00/bbl, that's still almost $20 Trillion which puts Americans back to work and 100% of the money stays in the U.S.  Talk about a "stimulus package!" 

Best of all, Enhanced Oil Recovery uses the carbon dioxide from power plants emissions, to inject underground which frees the previously non-recoverable oil left behind, as CO2 works better than anything else to free the oil. After you get the oil out, you plug the well, and leave the carbon dioxide emissions underground, "sequestered," which is why Enhanced Oil Recovery is the "green" way to produce America's oil!

Additional work has examined potential improvements in CO2-EOR technologies beyond the state-of-the-art that can further increase this potential.  This work evaluating the potential of "game changing" improvements in enhanced oil recovery efficiency for CO2-EOR illustrates that the wide-scale implementation of next generation CO2-EOR technology advances have the potential to increase domestic oil recovery efficiency from about one-third to over 60 percent. 

The presence of an oil bearing transition zone beneath the traditionally defined base (oil-water contact) of an oil reservoir is well established.  What is now clear, and as recently documented in a series of DOE Office of Fossil Energy reports, is that, under certain geologic and hydrodynamic conditions, an additional residual oil zone (ROZ) exists below this transition zone, and this resource could add another 100 billion barrels of oil resource in place in the United States, and an estimated 20 billion barrels could be recoverable with state-of-the-art CO2-EOR technologies.

Large volumes of technically recoverable domestic oil resources remain undeveloped and are yet to be discovered in the United States, and this potential associated with CO2-EOR represents just a portion, albeit large, of this potential. Undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the ground (in-place) total 1,124 billion barrels.  Of this large in-place resource, 430 billon barrels is estimated to be technically recoverable.  This resource includes undiscovered oil, trapped light oil amenable to CO2 enhanced oil recovery technologies, unconventional oil (deep heavy oil and tar sands) and new petroleum concepts (residual oil in reservoir transition zones).

The Following is a Press Release from the Department of Energy Regarding CO2-EOR

New CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Technology 
Could Greatly Boost U.S. Oil Supplies

Reports See Another 89-430 Billion Barrels of Oil Through Carbon Dioxide Injection, Other Advances

Washington, DC – State-of-the-art enhanced oil recovery with carbon dioxide, now recognized as a potential way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, could add 89 billion barrels to the recoverable oil resources of the United States, the Department of Energy has determined. Current U.S. proved reserves are 21.9 billion barrels. 

The 89-billion-barrel jump in resources was one of a number of possible increases identified in a series of assessments done for the Department which also found that, in the longer term, multiple advances in technology and widespread sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide could eventually add as much as 430 billion new barrels to the technically recoverable resource. 

Beginning efforts to develop the 89-billion-barrel addition to resources would depend on the availability of commercial CO2 in large volumes. If this oil could be added to the category of proven reserves, the U.S. would have the fifth largest oil reserves in the world behind Iraq, which has 115 billion barrels, based on present estimates; and an additional 430 billion barrels would make it first, ahead of Saudi Arabia with 261 billion barrels. The capture of CO2 from combustion in power generation and other industrial uses is the subject of other research and development programs sponsored by the Office of Fossil Energy. 

Next-generation enhanced recovery with carbon dioxide was judged to be a "game-changer" in oil production, one capable of doubling recovery efficiency. And geologic sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide in declining oil fields was endorsed last year as a potential method of reducing greenhouse base emissions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Done in compliance with the National Energy Policy Act of 2005 and other Congressional directives, the assessments looked at maximizing oil production and accelerating the productive use of carbon dioxide in all categories of petroleum resources, including as-yet undiscovered oil and the new resources in the residual oil zone. The findings are consolidated in the February 2006 report Undeveloped Domestic Oil Resources: The Foundation for Increasing Oil Production and a Viable Domestic Oil Industry. 

The 430 billion barrel potential was identified in increments of up to 110 billon barrels from applying today's state-of-the-art enhanced recovery in discovered fields – 90 billion in light oil, 20 billion in heavy oil; up to 179 billion barrels from undiscovered oil – 119 billion from conventional technology, 60 billion from enhanced recovery; up to 111 billion barrels from reserve growth – 71 billion from conventional technology, 40 billion from enhanced recovery; up to 20 billion from tapping the residual oil zone with enhanced recovery; and, another 10 billion from tar sands.

The separate assessments and reports contributing to the total resource estimate are: Basin Oriented Assessments, ten assessments of producing U.S. basins and the potential of state-of-the-art enhanced oil recovery; previously non-recoverable oil in the Residual Oil Zone, five reports looking at new resources in the residual oil zone; and, Evaluation of the Potential for "Game-Changer" Improvements in Oil Recovery Efficiency for CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery, a report on next-generation technology.

The Following is a Press Release from the Department of Energy Regarding CO2-EOR

U.S. Department of Energy • Office of Fossil Energy • Office of Oil and Natural Gas
February 2006

Project Facts
Game Changer Improvements Could Dramatically Increase
Domestic Oil Recovery Efficiency

The report, Evaluating the Potential for “Game-Changer” Improvements in Oil Recovery Efficiency from CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery, examines how a “step-change” in the efficiency of carbon dioxide-based enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) would help to increase oil production from domestic reservoirs.

Currently available primary and secondary oil production technologies recover only about one-third of the oil in-place in domestic reservoirs, leaving behind massive volumes of oil in the ground that was previously non-recoverable oil. Yet, scientific theory, laboratory tests, and selected field projects show that significant increases in oil recovery efficiency are possible. This technical report examines the role that “next generation” CO2-EOR technologies could provide in making “game changer” improvements in domestic oil recovery efficiency and in increasing domestic oil production. Three significant findings emerge from this study:

1. Traditionally practiced CO2-EOR technology will raise overall domestic oil recovery efficiency by only a few percent. The reasons for this relatively modest performance include: (1) CO2-EOR is still only applied in a few domestic oil basins, primarily the Permian Basin; (2) the traditional form of this technology is economic in a relatively small group of geologically favorable oil reservoirs; and, (3) most important, traditionally used CO2-EOR designs provide only a modest, 10% incremental recovery of the original oil in-place.

2. Integrated application of a suite of “next generation” technologies shows that much higher oil recovery efficiencies -- fully two-thirds of the oil in-place -- are feasible from an expanded group of domestic oil reservoirs. The analysis shows that a series of “next generation” CO2-EOR technologies could double the oil recovery efficiency from geologically favorable oil reservoirs and raise overall domestic oil recovery efficiency to over 60% of the original oil in place. In addition, “next generation” technology could extend the miscible CO2-EOR technology to a broader range of domestic oil reservoirs.

3. Successful development and integrated application of “next generation” CO2-EOR technologies could add 40 billion barrels of technically recoverable domestic oil resource (from the first six basins/regions studied). The previously issued six “basin-oriented” CO2-EOR studies reported that 43.3 billion barrels of domestic oil could become technically recoverable with “state-of-the-art” CO2-EOR technology. Successful development and integrated application of “next generation” CO2-EOR technologies could increase this to 83.7 billion barrels, from these six domestic oil basins/areas. (The potential for these “next generation” CO2-EOR technologies for the 10 basins/areas studied as of February 2006 has yet to be examined.)

The Good News!

America has more oil than all of the countries in the muslim/middle east combined!  America has twice the amount of energy in the form of natural gas than the middle east countries have oil!

Bad News:

We buy over 60% of the oil we need from foreign companies in foreign countries.  Some of this oil originates from companies and countries that do not like us and want to destroy America.