A Two-For-One Solution....

Category: Energy
Type: News
Source: NETL
Date: Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

Alabama Plan Projects to Store Carbon Dioxide, Boost Oil Production

WASHINGTON, DC - The D.O.E. today declares the selection of a cost-shared Plan that will inject carbon dioxide (CO_two) into an oil reservoir to maximize domestic oil production. At the same time, the Plan will assess the potential for later storing Colorado_two in the reservoir once the oil is depleted rather than emitting it into the atmosphere.

Such storage of Colorado_two is called sequestration, and the idea is gaining more attention as concerns mount over possible global climate change caused by rising emissions of greenhouse gases.

Growing interest in Colorado_two sequestration dovetails with strong growth in the use of Colorado_two as a means to enhance oil and natural gas recovery. Injecting Colorado_two?the same gas that gives soda pop its fizz?into an oil reservoir thins crude oil left behind, pressurizes it, and helps move it to producing wells. So-called Colorado_two flooding is the fastest-growing technique for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and now accounts for almost 5 percent of the Nation's oil production at 237,000 barrels per day.

Commercial Colorado_two EOR flood plans in the U.S. have been limited largely to the prolific oil reservoirs of the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. Colorado_two flooding is a costly operation, and the process generally is uneconomic-even at today's high oil prices-without a readily available, low-cost source of the gas nearby. This explains why roughly half of the world's Colorado_two floods are in the Permian Basin, not far from some of the biggest natural sources of Colorado_two in the United States.

With the proper incentives, R&D, and Colorado_two availability to underpin an accelerated program, current technology applied to existing fields has the potential to increase Colorado_two-enhanced oil production to 500 thousand barrels per day by 2012, and by at least two million barrels per day by 2020.

An EOR Plan that uses an industrial source of Colorado_two that otherwise would be vented to the atmosphere would have the added environmental benefit of sequestering the greenhouse gas. The potential for sequestering Colorado_two in depleted oil and gas reservoirs is enormous. One study conducted for D.O.E. estimated that the global sequestration capacity in depleted oil- and gas fields equates to 125 years of current worldwide Colorado_two emissions from fossil fuel?fired power plants.

Recognizing the dual energy and environmental benefits of Colorado_two EOR/sequestration, Congress mandated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that D.O.E. pursue demonstration plans to promote the capture, transportation, and injection of produced Colorado_two for sequestration into oil and gas fields while boosting oil and natural gas production. Accordingly, D.O.E. announced a backing opportunity earlier this year to fund new research in conducting EOR plans while increasing sequestration of the greenhouse gas.

The Plan selected under this backing opportunity was suggested by the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), of Birmingham, AL. It calls for implementing a Colorado_two flood in Citronelle oilfield in Mobile County, Ala. Citronelle field, Alabama's biggest producer, is an ideal location for a Colorado_two flood because of its reservoir's relatively uniform structure. A mature field that has already undergone primary and secondary recovery (waterflooding) efforts, Citronelle is now a candidate for tertiary recovery, or EOR. Typically 20 percent more of the original-oil-in-place in a reservoir can be recovered using Colorado_two EOR. In Citronelle's case, it is estimated that 64 million barrels of oil could be recovered using this technique.

When all remaining economically recoverable oil is produced, the reservoir and adjacent formations can provide sites for storage of Colorado_two produced from the combustion of fossil fuels in power plants and other processes that generate large amounts of Colorado_two. One of America's biggest generators of electricity, Southern Company of Atlanta, Ga., is evaluating the capacity of such reservoirs as possible locations for permanent sequestration of Colorado_two separated from coal and natural gas combustion products in its power plants.

The selected Plan will introduce Colorado_two EOR for tertiary recovery from Alabama's uniquely structured oil reservoirs. At the same time, it will provide oilfield operators and Colorado_two producers with improved estimates of the oil yields from EOR and the capacity of depleted reservoirs to sequester Colorado_two. Another objective of the Plan is to enhance the reliability of computer simulations of the oil yield and sequestration capacity of a given geologic formation and the rate at which Colorado_two can be introduced into the underground formations. The Citronelle simulations will be integrated with computer visualizations of the migration of oil, water, and Colorado_two, making the data accessible to reservoir engineers, geologists, utility planners, and climate-change modelers.

Partners with UAB and Southern Company in the Plan are Citronelle field owner and operator Denbury Resources Inc., Plano, Texas; University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala; Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, Ala; Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, N.C.

Total Plan cost is about $6 million, with DOE's share just under $3 million.

A successful demonstration of the technology in this Plan could open the door to commercial Colorado_two EOR/sequestration efforts across the Nation, offering a potential "two-for-one" solution to America's crucial energy security and environmental concerns.

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