Potential for Additional CO2-Flood Projects in the US

Abstract

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 113975, "The Potential for Additional Carbon Dioxide Flooding Projects in the United States," by Hitesh Mohan, SPE, Marshall Carolus, SPE, and Khosrow Biglarbigi, SPE, Intek, prepared for the 2008 SPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium, Tulsa, 19-23 April. The paper has not been peer reviewed. There is renewed interest in carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2 EOR). Growing concern about climate change and greenhouse gases has increased interest in carbon capture and sequestration. CO2 EOR provides a value-added opportunity to increase crude-oil production while sequestering substantial volumes of industrial CO2. An analysis was conducted to determine the incremental domestic production that could be realized if industrially produced CO2 were available for EOR. Challenges include available volumes of CO2, infrastructure requirements, and prices of the CO2. Introduction US conventional crude-oil production continues to decline while demand for crude and finished products rises. According to the US Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (US DOE EIA) and shown in Fig. 1, the US demand will be greater than 27 million B/D by 2030, while total production will be less than 10 million B/D. Four factors were identified that will have a significant effect on widespread implementation of CO2 EOR.Target resourceTechnologyAvailability of CO2Economics Target Resource There are 1,673 reservoirs onshore in the continental US that are candidates for CO2-miscible flooding. Fig. 2 shows the reservoirs that were identified on the basis of the following criteria.Gravity greater than 22°APIReservoir pressure greater than the minimum miscibility pressureDepth greater than 2,500 ftOil viscosity less than 10 cpCurrent oil saturation greater than 20%Either sandstone or carbonate rock Technology CO2-EOR technologies have been demonstrated to be profitable in commercial-scale applications for nearly 30 years. As of 2006, 80 CO2-EOR projects in the US had a combined production of 234,000 BOPD. Ten of these projects were started between 2004 and 2006. Of the projects active in 2006, 58 are in the Permian Basin. The reason is partly because of the prevalence of candidate reservoirs in that region, and because of the steady availability of natural CO2.