The secret weapon against 'peak oil' 08 March 06

applied to Saudi oil fields etc.? In which case, we are in trouble!

The article says that the practice of using carbon dioxide to enhance recovery of oil has been going on for over 30 years. Have you wondered where the carbon dioxide comes from and where will it come from in the future? There was (and probably still is) a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide from deep wells in Colorado to the oil fields in East Texas. Geologic sources of carbon dioxide are not plentiful or widely distributed. The source in Colorado is about 1,000 miles (~1,600 km) from the oil fields.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has done research on alternative sources of carbon dioxide. The last two paragraphs of the article allude to the source. About 20 years ago, DOE built a mid sized industrial boiler that uses pure oxygen to replace the oxygen in the vitiated exhaust gas and then reused the augmented exhaust gas as combustion air. Eventually, this process replaces all of the nitrogen in the combustion gas with carbon dioxide, thus eliminating the major source of nitrogen oxides emissions, oxidation of the nitrogen in the air. Of course, the boiler produces more carbon dioxide than the boiler needs, so the excess, which is equal to the volume of oxygen used, is available for enhanced oil recovery.

Exxon/Mobil conducted tests of the same process at a Portland cement plant in the Midwestern USA about 15 years ago. The advantage that Portland cement production has over boiler emissions is that the cement emissions include the carbon dioxide that calcining of limestone releases. Thus, cement plants produce about twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of fuel burned as do boilers.

The advantage of these process is that the have nearly no gaseous emissions. The disadvantage is that the products, electricity, heat or cement cost more because of the capital and operating costs of the extra equipment required for the production of oxygen and cleaning the carbon dioxide.

I question the necessity for those extra expenditures, either for reduction of carbon dioxide emissions or for reduction of pollutant emissions.

I know little of Saudi Arabia, but my mental picture is one of sand and does not include either limestone (aka, marble, chalk) or of a vibrant industrial society that has either boilers or cement plants. In addition, enhanced oil recovery by carbon dioxide will not work on all oil wells. The depth and temperature of the oil deposits must fall into narrow ranges. The Saudi fields might not qualify. I forget the details; it has been 15 years since I researched the subject. The DOE discusses their program at http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/eor/index.html. Or, you could Google “enhanced oil recovery, carbon dioxide”

It is pretty interesting stuff. Happy reading.

Amazing what you can learn on these things. Never come across this before. At a very very quick look, it seems to be fairly established technology so the GW worriers amongst us can make a sigh of relief.

Best,

Peter

Mark,

It should be borne in mind here that the USA will get their oil one way or another in the short to medium term. You cannot just turn off the pumps.

This will not (as a corollory of your enttry might lead one to believe) quadruple world supplies. Overall, as I understand it (if I remember the contents of the IEA link I posted recently), it may boost world recoverable reserves by about 10% overall. USA’s reserves would be quadrupled because they have so nearly run dry – this technology allows them to access the last of their available reserves!

This could (should?) be seen as an alternative to Alaskan oil drilling as a stop gap until there is more take up of renewables/the distant hope of fusion/the hydrogen or electric economy. And something , hopefully to relieve the pressure to interfere in the middle east. (won’t hold my breath on that one!)

The UK also is running dry & is facing up to becoming a net importer of gas.

The costs of Capture and storage are high. This in itself should promote renewables & energy conservation.

In the meantime, if you want to promote renewables take up, you have to deal with the NIMBY’s – and have a reasonable expectation of what can be achieved.

Regards Martin

Sequestering carbon from coal-fueled power plants to obtain more oil offsets the emissions from using that oil.

In addition, once this technology is developed and implemented, an infrastructure is created which can store more carbon even when those wells run dry.

In this light, sequestering may store more carbon than the remaining oil would create.

I support this activity because it is going in the right direction. Once the infrastructure is created that captures and stores carbon, then it will be easier to develop it more. Using old abandon sites to store more carbon may well be the next use of this technology long after the oil is gone.

Mark, with respect to Martin’s comments, the alternatives to this technology are all worse since we cannot switch to renewable energy quickly enough. It takes decades to build a renewable infrastructure.

Best,

Dan

It’s a matter of dimishing returns & eventually the costs of extraction should outweight the payback (like one gallon of oil (equivalent) is used to extract one gallon of oil).

OTOH, we just keep giving bigger tax breaks & subsidies to fossil fuels, so it may get to 2 gallons of oil to extract one gallon without the economists catching on how economically stupid that is (not to mention environmentally stupid). But I think Americans want that—they’d rather pay extremely high prices for their fuel April 15th & complain about taxes, than pay at the pump. We live in a crazy world.

Hi all just watched the bbc 2 documentary…

we can all do something for the science

log on to www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange and download the climate model on to your computer and help the scientists

its very easy and we will be actually doing something….

Just a word of warning about the climate change computer modelling exercise. I downloaded it this morning and it locked up my laptop and seemed to stop email from working. It’s a great shame cos I agree it’s something positive that we should be able to do. Of course it could just be my computer…...

Here’s another worthwhile tome for you Douglas. This one’s even bigger than the last, but very much worth a read if you have an interest in Carbon Capture and Storage.

This seems to be even more comprehensive than the IEA report – hence it 20MB size.

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/SRCCS.pdf

All the best Martin

Information about Carbon Capture and Storage in a somewhat more digestable form than I have so far posted can be found at the UK energy research Centre/UK Carbon Capture and storage consortium information website.

http://www.co2storage.org.uk/

The UK energy research centre was set up by academics aware that big changes are about to take place in energy supply in the UK. One of it’s purposes when it was set up was to be a point of impartial advice for the government and public to help in making the tough decisions ahead. One of their tasks is “Creating, gathering and disseminating knowledge of the long-term means for achieving an energy system which is environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable and meets energy needs securely and affordably ”. Their other focus is pulling together collaboration between government, academia and industry on energy issues.

http://www.ukerc.ac.uk

All the best Martin