Use of Co2 for Oil Recovery

While the world is making all out efforts to ensure that we emit as little CO2 as possible into the atmosphere, there is one industry that is already pumping and storing CO2 into the ground, and for a useful purpose. And that is - surprise, surprise - the oil industry.

In the process known as EOR (enhanced oil recovery), oil companies have been pumping CO2 into oil reservoirs to enhance the amount of oil that can be recovered from that oil field. And it appears them use of CO2 for oil recovery this could be a multibillion biz opportunity .



OK, let's be honest. EOR cannot take care of all our CO2 emissions, which run into about 35 billion T per year. So the traditional methods of carbon sequestration will have to play a role, or someone needs to come up with a way of making many more such products out of CO2.

What are your thoughts?

One thing that's sometimes overlooked is that natural, which produces less CO2 than oil when burned, often produces a lot of CO2 at the wellhead, which is vented to the atmosphere. In Wyoming, for example, the state govt. is finally beginning to force gas producers to find alternatives to dumping their CO2 in the air. These include pipelines to oilfields for EOR, and another technology that's ExxonMobil has been using for their feelgood ads on TV called Controlled Freeze Zone, where the CO2 is frozen out of the natural gas stream.