DOE: CO2 Ehanced Oil Recovery Could Add 89 Billion BBL to Reserves

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.  Multiple advances in technology and widespread sequestration of industrial CO2 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. 

Next-generation enhanced recovery with CO2 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.

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. 

This seams to me to be a little over hype of the subject, it isn't new, just the recent study is new and putting big numbers on it can make headlines, as it has done here. Not that this technology isn't very important, it certainly is, but implementation of this technology is likely to be slow.  In my post on sequestration I pointed out that they are using this technology in the Permian Basin of West Texas and we are shipping CO2 produced at the Great Plains Gasification Project across the line to Canada to the Weyburn Project for this purpose.  Two BP gasification plants under development one in CA and one in Scotland and the Medicine Bow coal liquefaction plant being developed in Wyoming all are planning to use this technology.  It doesn't seem to me that finding sources of CO2 for a significant number of projects would be that difficult.  At some time all new power plants should be required to consider this during the site selection process.  There appears to still be some question as to whether the sequestration is permanent or will leak to the surface at some time.  I read today that the procedure is to collect the CO2 with the natural gas that comes up with the oil, separate the CO2 and natural gas and then reinject the CO2.  This answers one of my questions about how the process works.  I once worked for a company that had, and is still selling, a cryogenic process for separating the CO2 from natural gas, fairly expensive, but this could be a bonanza for them.  Injection of in underground "caverns" is considered doable, but I some think this requires more study before it could be widely adopted.

Is it not useful to use it for EOR if only half of it remains sequestered as some have suggested?  It certainly increases our supplies of liquid fuels for which we have insufficient alternate supplies at the present or would you rather pay $100/bbl for oil?  We will have $100 oil some day in any event, but couldn't we use some time to further develop alternate technologies?  Or will we all perish from global warming if we don't stop developing fossil fuels?  I don't see how we could get along without a serious depression and greatly reduced standard of living if we don't adopt a sensible energy policy that includes environmentally sound use of fossil fuels.

New CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Technology Could Greatly Boost U.S. Oil Supplies,
DOE Fossil Energy Techline, March 3, 2006

Technorati tags: global warming, sequestration, energy, technology

Comments

[JN2]

>>environmentally sound use of fossil fuels.<<

Doesn't that mean we don't burn them? Sure, let's use oil for (truly) recyclable plastics and fibres, but not for fuel.

[Cervus]

JN2:

Nice idea, but we're decades from being able to do that. At present renewables can only provide a small fraction of worldwide fuel use. Maybe we'll get there once algal oil becomes viable, but in the meantime petroleum is all we have.

[JesseJenkins]

Yes Cervus, we may be decades away from a sustainable energy future, but a continued reliance on fossil fuels enabled by enhanced oil recovery will delay the innovation necessary to make such a future real.

"would you rather pay $100/bbl for oil?" asks Jim. I say certainly! Necessity is the mother of invention and there's simply little incentive to make the innovations necessary to transition to a sustainable energy future while we still have access to cheap supplies of readily available hydrocarbons.

Additionally, I don't much like the idea of pumping out tens or hundreds of billions of new oil supplies under the pretense of 'mitigating global warming' through carbon sequestration for EOR. Even if the CO2 stays sequestered, burning all of that oil will offset the benefits of sequestering that CO2.

Remember, fossil fuels ARE sequestered CO2! Pumping them out of the ground and burning them is exactly what got us into this situation and mining coal to burn and then sequestering that CO2 to get more oil to burn doesn't help much at all. True CO2 sequestration can't result in additional carbon being mined/pumped out of the ground or it defeats the whole purpose.

Idaho National Labs has been exploring the possibility of sequestering CO2 in basalt, rather than in sedementary formations (i.e. oil/gas deposits and saline aquafers). This could be one way to truly sequester our CO2, but it's going to be expensive and NO ONE will do it until there is sufficient economic incentive.

This points again to the necessity of a carbon tax or a carbon cap-and-trade system that gives us an economic incentive to actually reduce our CO2 emissions. Until that happens, the only sequestration that will happen is the kind that is used for EOR as there is profit to be made there. That is, until that happens, little progress will be made in reducing CO2 emissions.

[Ecacofonix]

It is not entirely clear from the article whether the 89 billion barrels is a possibility at least in the medium term - say about 10 years from now. Or is it just just the proverbial question of putting old wine in a new bottle?

Another question I have is the recovery of diesel from coal. I understand that there have been some recent advances that make this an economical process. If diesel from coal becomes an economically sustainable possibility, suddenly the entire fossil fuel economics change! USA has the largest amount of coal deposites, followed by Russia, China & India! But the question in this regard again is the same: is the new invention just words or does it really mean something practically?

The third question is biodiesel from algae. It has been mentioned by another commentator, and it sure seems to have potential, but from what I underdstand it has not been tried out on a large scale. A site, Oilgae.com - Oil from Algae does provide some useful inputs in this regard, but does not really tell us how possible and nearby is large-scale production of oil from algae...

I'm just left wondering..

Ec from IT

[Helium_guy]

There is also a plant starting up in Arizona/New Mexico that should prove to boost the US into one of the largest CO2/Helium suppliers as well.

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