MCCONNELL: GAP BETWEEN EOR AND SEQUESTRATION SHOULD BE NARROWED

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
05/04/12

PITTSBURGH—Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Chuck McConnell continued to push for the utilization of captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery operations, saying this week that the CCS community should aim to bridge the gap between enhanced oil recovery and geologic sequestration. In a keynote address here at the Eleventh Annual Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Conference, McConnell said that EOR should be viewed as a method of permanent CO2 sequestration. “When we talk about EOR we have to think about it as a sequestration tool, and when we think about sequestration we have to look at the business case,” he said. “We have to look at enhanced oil recovery as a way to make [permanent sequestration] happen.” McConnell said that the CCS industry should not view EOR and geologic sequestration with an “either/or” mentality. He described the “false choice” of having to choose between them. “It’s not sequestration or enhanced oil recovery. It’s sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. It isn’t one or the other, it’s both,” he said.

McConnell’s remarks this week further underscore the rhetoric which he has branded himself and DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy with since the Obama Administration nominated him for the position of assistant secretary last summer. In his speech, McConnell continued to push EOR as a CO2 utilization method that could help project operators establish a salient business case at a time when there is no price on CO2. He also emphasized the potential for the technology to help cement United State’s role as a leader in the CCS field.

Seizing on his hallmark argument for utilization, McConnell said EOR could lead to a 30 to 40 percent reduction in imported oil and bring in more than $10 trillion to the American economy over the next three decades. “We’re probably approaching a known geological reach of well over 100 years of CO2 storage capacity in this country just in enhanced oil recovery geologies. So it’s not a niche, it’s not a little bit that can get us going. It’s a big part of the business case for the future,” he said.

Leader in Utilization Technologies

McConnell said that industry should take advantage of the energy infrastructure already available across the country in the form of pipelines and transmission systems and leverage it to create an advantage when developing EOR and other utilization technologies. “It’s a chance for us to take those natural resources that we have that are abundant and affordable and make them sustainable long-term,” he said.

McConnell said the U.S. has the opportunity now to commercialize the technologies that he says will likely be in high demand in the years to come, particularly in coal-reliant developing countries like China and India. However, he said the U.S. country needs to take advantage of its position now or else risk losing out on future economic opportunities. “As we’re here in the United States often noodling very hard around what we believe the future of coal should be, I’m here to tell you that the future of coal is very much being defined in other places in the world where there’s a lot of people….that’s why it’s so critical that we look at it as our opportunity not just to use our own coal, but to develop our own technologies and global leadership about how we’re going to use coal and natural gas in the future.”