Tertiary Recovery

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.

A lot of the big run-up in U.S. crude oil production since 2010 is tied to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Eagle Ford, the Bakken and other tight-oil plays. But while oil from shale and other reservoirs with very low permeability has grabbed the headlines, crude production from enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in older conventional oil fields—especially using CO2 flooding techniques--is on the rise. Crude production from CO2-based EOR operations could more than double by 2020 (to 600 Mb/d or higher), providing yet another boost to U.S. energy independence. In today’s blog, we begin a look at enhanced oil recovery, with a focus on techniques that use large volumes of carbon dioxide.