The National Coal Council voted Tuesday to accept a draft white paper on carbon dioxide utilization drafted by its Coal Policy Committee. Committee members are now invited to provide supplemental comments on the report by Sept. 9. The comments will then be considered and any needed updates to the draft made before it is sent to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. The report was commissioned by the Department of Energy.
The report suggests that the government continue to focus its carbon utilization research and development on enhanced oil recovery.
EOR offers a significant economic opportunity for captured carbon, the report says: “Assuming a price for CO2 of $33/metric ton ($1.75/Mcf) delivered to the oil field at pressure and a $70 per barrel oil price, and using 0.45 metric tons of purchased (net) CO2 per barrel of recovered oil, utilization of CO2 for EOR results in a transfer of $14.90 of the $70 per barrel price to firms involved with capture and transport of CO2. The economic value is sensitive to the price of oil, of course, and will vary in response to oil market conditions.”
The current WTI price for a barrel of oil is less than $50, according to the NASDAQ. During a Tuesday webcast, Coal Policy Committee Chairman Deck Slone said the discrepancy was intentional. “These values assume an oil price of 70 [dollars] a barrel, which of course we are not at in current market conditions, and of course no one can predict what future oil prices will be, but it was deemed that this would be a reasonable number given the forward-looking nature of this report,” he said.
While EOR holds the greatest potential, that does not mean other possible uses of carbon should be ignored, Slone said: “We encourage the department to continue to focus federal policy on encouraging geological utilization and storage pathways. … That recommendation should not mean that efforts should not be also paid and investments made in non-geologic pathways.”
