CO2 Pipeline

New and expanded efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide, have been making headlines globally on a daily basis for a while now. Canada’s energy industry has been increasingly contributing to that newsfeed this year, with two large projects announced in Alberta that will capture, use, and sequester large volumes of CO2 generated from the oil sands as well as other sources of oil and gas production in Western Canada. In today’s blog, we review the emissions profile of the Canadian oil and gas sector and discuss two of the largest carbon capture, use, and sequestration projects announced to date.

The vast potential for permanently storing carbon dioxide underground by using it for enhanced oil recovery can only be realized if produced or captured CO2 can be economically transported long distances via pipeline. And the only way that can happen is if the CO2 is compressed into a “supercritical” or “dense-phase” fluid — a state that is somewhat compressible like a gas but flows and can be pumped like a liquid. When CO2 is in a supercritical state, much more of it can economically flow through a pipeline to the producing field. And when it gets there, the dense-phase CO2 can be injected into an oil production zone, where it has the unique ability to flow through permeable rock formations, bond with and “swell” trapped oil molecules, and free the oil to move to the production well, then up to the surface. Given that CO2-based EOR is destined to become a much more significant activity in the energy industry, it’s time for a fun-filled review of the thermodynamics of fluids as it relates to the transportation of CO2 and its use in the production of crude oil. (Wait! Don’t leave! This will be easy to follow! We promise!) Today, we continue our series on the rapidly evolving CO2 market and why it matters to crude oil producers.

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) offers the potential for releasing huge volumes of crude now stranded underground, but the pace of EOR is dependent largely on how much carbon dioxide can be captured and piped to mature oil fields where EOR would work best. Many of the best natural sources of CO2 near these fields have already been tapped, and while they will continue to provide most of the CO2 used in EOR, they need to be supplemented by expansions and by new, industrial sources of CO2 if EOR is to fulfill its promise. In today’s blog, we continue our look at CO2-producing projects on the horizon, and assess the resulting outlook for CO2-based EOR.