Enhanced Oil Recovery is NOT Carbon Sequestration

Most car­bon seques­tra­tion projects involve using the CO2 to pump into under­ground oil for­ma­tions in order to get out more oil than they’d  nor­mal­ly be able to extract.  This has some obvi­ous con­tra­dic­tions and should not be con­sid­ered car­bon seques­tra­tion, espe­cial­ly since much of that CO2 comes back up in the pro­duced oil.

As this MIT report shows on pages 4–5, CO2 comes up with the oil, and is sep­a­rat­ed and recy­cled to con­tin­ue the oil recov­ery process.  The oil indus­try lives tries to recov­er as much CO2 as pos­si­ble.  Only about 1/3 to 1/2 of the CO2 pumped back into the oil for­ma­tion is (inad­ver­tent­ly) sequestered (see page 6) — and only because the oil indus­try’s pre­cious flu­id is lost in the process.

There is also the real­i­ty that the oil pro­duced in the process releas­es CO2 when burned.

In the Wey­burn oil field in Saskatchewan, Cana­da – where CO2 from the Dako­ta Gasi­fi­ca­tion Com­pa­ny’s coal gasi­fi­ca­tion plant in Beu­lah, ND is piped north to pump into the oil field, buy­ing 25 more years of oil pro­duc­tion – 2.8 times more CO2 would be released from all of the extra oil they expect to pro­duce than the amount they “sequester” (ignor­ing reports of leakage).

In the Per­mi­an Basin (TX/NM), 47% of the amount of CO2 pumped into the ground is re-released by burn­ing the extra oil pro­duced (that would oth­er­wise stay in the ground).

Burn­ing coal, waste or bio­mass with gasi­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy is not a cli­mate solu­tion, even if you expend enor­mous amounts of mon­ey and ener­gy to cap­ture much of the CO2 and pump it into the ground – known as car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion (CCS).  This awful, and tax­pay­er-sub­si­dized, idea is often cou­pled with enhanced oil recov­ery (EOR), which uses that CO2 to get oil out of deplet­ed oil fields.  Doing this just means that oil that would oth­er­wise be left in the ground will be burned, adding CO2 back to the atmos­phere.  That CO2 pumped into the ground could very well leak out of the frac­tured sub­sur­face and get back into the atmos­phere as well, negat­ing the “solu­tion” of try­ing to per­ma­nent­ly store CO2 under­ground.  The only way to sequester car­bon is to leave it in the ground in the first place, and to end the use of com­bus­tion for energy.

Here are the cal­cu­la­tions behind the num­bers above:

Wey­burn:

20,000,000 tons CO2 [1] expect­ed to be inject­ed to get 130,000,000 extra bar­rels of oil over 25 years. [2]
0.43 met­ric tons CO2/barrel of oil [3]

130,000,000 * 0.43 = 55,900,000 met­ric tons CO2 per extra oil to be lib­er­at­ed in Wey­burn from EOR

55,900,000 / 20,000,000 = 2.80 times more CO2 released than sequestered

Per­mi­an:

1.6 BCFD (bil­lion cubic feet per day) = 1,600,000,000 cu ft/day of CO2 pumped into the fields [4],[5
1 SCF CO2 = 0.0001 met­ric tons CO2 [6]
1,600,000,000 * 0.0001 = 160,000 met­ric tons CO2/day

180,000 extra barrels/day of oil per day pro­duced [4]
170,000 extra barrels/day of oil per day pro­duced accord­ing to anoth­er source [6]
175,000 aver­age of these two estimates

0.43 met­ric tons CO2/barrel of oil [3]

175,000 * 0.43 = 75,250 met­ric tons CO2 per extra oil lib­er­at­ed dai­ly in Per­mi­an Basin from EOR
75,250 / 160,000 = 0.47 (47%) of the amount of CO2 sequestered is re-released through burn­ing the extra oil recovered

Sources:
[1] http://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/weyburn.html and http://www.planetseed.com/relatedarticle/weyburn-oil-field-enhanced-oil-recovery
[2] http://www.netl.doe.gov/file%20library/research/oil-gas/CO2_EOR_Primer.pdf
[3] http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html
[4] http://www.nist.gov/pml/high_megawatt/upload/6_2-Hustad-Approved.pdf (p5)
[5] http://www.kindermorgan.com/business/co2/transport.cfm
[6] http://www.uigi.com/co2_quantity_convert.html
[7] http://enhancedenergy.com/eor/industry.html