Significance of Enhanced Oil Recovery in Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction

Abstract

Limiting the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and at the same time, meeting the increased energy demand can be achieved by applying carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies, which hold potential as the bridge for energy and emission-intensive industries to decarbonization goals. At the moment, the only profitable industrial large-scale carbon sequestration projects are large-scale carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) projects. This paper gives a general overview of the indirect and direct use of captured CO2 in CCUS with a special focus on worldwide large-scale CO2-EOR projects and their lifecycle emissions. On the basis of scientific papers and technical reports, data from 23 contemporary large-scale CO2-EOR projects in different project stages were aggregated, pointing out all the specificities of the projects. The specificities of individual projects, along with the lack of standardized methodologies specific for estimating the full lifecycle emissions resulting from CO2-EOR projects, pose a challenge and contribute to uncertainties and wide flexibilities when estimating emissions from CO2-EOR projects, making the cross-referencing of CO2-EOR projects and its comparison to other climate-mitigation strategies rather difficult. Pointing out the mentioned project’s differentiations and aggregating data on the basis of an overview of large-scale CO2-EOR projects gives useful information for future work on the topic of a CO2-EOR project’s lifecycle emissions.