Using CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery as a Bridge to Permanent Sequestration
The use of CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has been a successful and profitable technique in places such as the Permian Basin of Texas for over four decades. Historically, this technique has relied on piping CO2 naturally occurring underground to oil fields. The possibility to expand the commercial use of CO2 for EOR in many oil-producing regions raises the question of whether this technique can help provide incentives to capture CO2. Moreover, using CO2 for EOR results over time in much of the CO2 remaining in the oil reservoir, effectively sequestering the CO2. Once EOR using CO2 is no longer economic in a given field, the CO2 can be either used for other purposes or appropriately sequestered. This presentation focuses on how companies can start the process of pilot-testing EOR using CO2 in oil fields, and how pilot projects can be profitably scaled up over time, thereby encouraging further capture of CO2 from industrial sources.