Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
4/4/2014
The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory last week issued a Request for Information seeking potential opportunities for carbon-dioxide storage via enhanced oil recovery that may ultimately lead to competitively awarded funding for related projects. Specifically, the March 28 RFI seeks information on “opportunities and knowledge gaps that, if properly addressed, will allow non-conventional CO2-EOR targets, including residual oil zones (ROZ), to contribute toward increased CO2 storage via wide-scale deployment of CO2-EOR,” as well as technology improvements “that will lead to increased CO2 storage at conventional CO2-EOR operations.” Responses are due by April 24. According to the RFI, information sought by DOE includes:
- Geologic settings in the United States that are not conventional CO2-EOR targets but that have the potential to accept and store CO2 while producing hydrocarbon resources;
- Gaps in the available characterization data for such non-conventional settings;
- The anticipated technology challenges associated with efficiently and effectively recovering crude oil and storing CO2 in non-conventional settings; and
- Technology improvements and operation/maintenance changes that would allow for more effective storage of CO2 in conventional CO2-EOR targets while also promoting oil recovery.
NETL notes that it “could use the information obtained through responses to this RFI to develop one or more Areas of Interest for research and development projects under the Carbon Storage Program. These Areas of Interest may subsequently be incorporated into a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) that will seek applications for competitively awarded financial assistance projects involving novel Research and Development (R&D) for innovative, transformative technologies pertinent to carbon storage in both non-conventional and conventional CO2-EOR targets.” DOE anticipates that research projects solicited under the resulting FOA may include field and lab analyses, methods for addressing technical challenges at non-conventional targets and novel technologies and operational that will “maximize CO2 storage in conventional CO2-EOR targets.”
‘A Very Large Untapped Resource’ for CO2 Storage
The RFI states that non-conventional reservoirs in the United States “may represent a very large untapped resource for large-scale, long-term CO2 storage. If properly identified, characterized, and exploited via CO2-EOR, these reservoirs could increase the economic feasibility of large-scale CO2 storage and also introduce opportunities in geographic regions where there are limited primary CO2-EOR targets.” Considerable uncertainty and technical challenges, however, do exist, DOE says. “Many of the potential targets are poorly characterized, and many non-conventional targets are very different than conventional reservoirs in terms of rock permeability, crude oil miscibility, residual oil saturation and other factors,” the RFI states. “Because industrial interest in non-conventional targets is currently very limited, DOE’s support of research into the exploration and assessment of non-conventional CO2-EOR targets could fill a research gap that otherwise would not likely be addressed in the near-term.”
When it comes to CO2-EOR in conventional oil reservoirs, DOE notes that the technology is established and the benefits are currently being realized. The RFI emphasizes that growing and advancing CO2-EOR is “strategically connected” the mission of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy in that “CO2-EOR represents a market that will drive development of CO2 capture technologies” and advanced CO2-EOR operations “will contact a greater portion of the rock within a target formation and store more CO2 as a result.” In addition, “technological capabilities needed to advance CO2-EOR in terms of crude oil recovery, efficiency, and monitoring will also improve and enable CO2 storage in saline formations.”
The RFI says, though, that “in order to fully exploit the long-term CO2 storage potential of conventional oil reservoirs, it may be possible to develop and employ novel technologies and/or operational practices whose primary goal is to maximize the amount of CO2 injected into and retained within the oil reservoir, with a secondary benefit of extracting more OOIP than current CO2-EOR technologies and practices. However, research and development of such technologies and practices may not occur in the absence of DOE support because industry’s economic interest in CO2-EOR must focus on maximizing oil extraction while minimizing the amount of CO2 purchased and injected.”
