Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
Volume 50, Number 7, July 2011, pp. 55-60

Summary

One promising method for reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions when storing CO₂ in oil reservoirs is CO₂ enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In order to make a significant contribution to mitigating climate change from emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), CO₂ EOR must actually reduce CO₂ emissions by storing net positive volumes of CO₂. This requires that CO₂-EOR schemes store more CO₂ in the subsurface than the execution of the project emits (net positive storage of CO₂). Fugitive emissions associated with CO₂ EOR primarily include the burning of fossil fuels (fuel gas) to power CO₂-injection compressors and the on-site consumption of electric power, which results in CO₂ emissions off site, where the power was generated. Evaluating the effectiveness of CO₂ EOR in reducing CO₂ emissions must be conducted in an unbiased way in which only relevant fugitive emissions that are directly connected with the CO₂-EOR project are deducted. It has been suggested that fugitive emissions from downstream oil refining and consumption of the transportation products should be deducted from the net CO₂ stored by CO₂-EOR projects. This presumes that these emissions (refining and consumption) are incremental to world aggregate oil-consumption emissions and would not occur if the EOR project was not executed. World oil production is determined by world oil demand and if CO₂-EOR projects were not undertaken, some other source of oil would step forward and fill the gap. Therefore, executing CO₂-EOR projects will not result in incremental aggregate refining and consumption emissions. When downstream-refining and product-consumption fugitive emissions are excluded from the calculation of project-life-cycle CO₂-EOR storage, it is clear that CO₂ EOR does result in net positive CO₂ storage.

© 2011. Society of Petroleum Engineers

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History

• Original manuscript received: 28 January 2011
• Meeting paper published: 20 October 2010
• Revised manuscript received: 26 March 2011
• Manuscript approved: 25 May 2011
• Published online: 1 July 2011
• Version of record: 14 July 2011