Update on the 2020 U.S. Geological Survey National Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery and Associated Carbon Dioxide Retention Resources
Abstract
In 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed a probabilistic assessment of carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) and associated CO2 retention resources for the United States. Results are planned to be published as a USGS series factsheet, circular, and data release. CO2-EOR is a known industrial practice that can both utilize and store captured CO2 emissions to mobilize oil to production in amenable reservoirs. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) can play a significant role in meeting the energy-related CO2 emission reduction objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The USGS identified more than 3,500 reservoirs in a proprietary commercial database that are candidates for miscible CO2 injection and assessed them for technically recoverable oil as well as potential retained CO2 associated with the CO2-EOR process. Reservoirs amenable to miscible CO2 injection were screened for suitable API gravity of oil, oil viscosity, and minimum miscibility pressure and met minimum requirements for reservoir size, thickness, and permeability. These oil reservoirs span 185 previously defined USGS plays in 33 petroleum provinces (or basins) of 7 regions underlying the onshore and state waters of the conterminous United States. The assessment results are estimates of the mean value, the P5 percentile (5% likelihood that the value is less), the P50 percentile (or median), and the P95 percentile for the technically recoverable oil resource and the retained CO2, given current technology. The planned data release includes results for each reservoir plus estimates for: the mean value from a distribution of the original oil in place (OOIP), the recovery factor or percentage of the OOIP that can be recovered through CO2-EOR, the gross utilization factor (gross CO2, both purchased and recycled, injected per barrel of oil recovered), the net utilization factor (only purchased CO2 per barrel of oil recovered), and the retention volume (percentage of the injected CO2 at atmospheric conditions that remains in the subsurface). The data release will also provide the correlation matrices that establish pairwise geological and methodological dependencies between reservoirs, plays, provinces, and regions that were used to aggregate the assessment results.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMSY35E0651F