CO2-enhanced oil recovery
(CO2-EOR) has emerged
as a major option for productively using CO2 emissions
captured from electric power and other industrial facilities as part
of carbon capture and storage (CCS) operations. Not only can depleting
oil fields provide secure, well-characterized sites for storing CO2, such fields can also provide a source of revenues to offset
the costs of capturing CO2 by producing incremental oil.
This paper draws significantly on work by Advanced Resources International,
Inc. (ARI), sponsored by the United States Department of Energy’s
National Energy Technology Laboratory (U.S. DOE/NETL) [Improving Domestic Energy Security and
Lowering CO2 Emissions with “Next Generation”
CO2-Enhanced Oil RecoveryARIArlington, VA2011] and the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research
and Development Programme (IEAGHG) [CO2 Storage in Depleted Oilfields: Global Application
Criteria for Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil RecoveryARIArlington, VA2009], that demonstrates that CO2-EOR offers
large CO2 storage capacity potential and could accommodate
a major portion of the CO2 captured from industrial facilities
for the next 30 years. This work also demonstrates that CO2 can be effectively and permanently stored when deployed in association
with CO2-EOR, with the amount stored depending upon the
priority placed on maximizing storage. In addition to showing that
CCS benefits from CO2-EOR by providing the revenues from
sale of CO2, overcoming other barriers, while producing
oil with a lower CO2 emissions “footprint”,
the report demonstrates that CO2-EOR needs CCS, because
large-scale future implementation of CO2-EOR will be dependent
upon CO2 supplies from industrial sources.
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