Potential of CO2-enhanced oil recovery coupled with carbon capture and storage in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in the UAE

The potential of adopting CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) coupled with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at a large scale is significant for major oil exporters like the United Arab Emirates. We develop a system dynamics model of the interactions between the demand of CO2-EOR to sustain oil output as reservoirs age, the country's production targets, and the required carbon prices to accelerate the adoption of CO2-EOR with CCS. We simulate 12 scenarios that represents different pathways for oil production, CO2 emissions growth and performance of CO2-EOR. The scenarios consider the sensitivity to key parameters: net utilization factor of CO2 for the marginal barrel of oil produced, the time it takes for injected CO2 to reach the production well (breakthrough time), and the share of EOR wells going to CO2-EOR operation. We find that a carbon price of 10-15 $/t CO2 in the first decade is needed in order to offset the cost of the CCS operations with the potential of breaking even by 2030. The large-scale adoption of CO2-EOR with CCS in the UAE can help in meeting 2.2-39.2% of the UAE 2nd national committed reduction target, i.e., 72.85 million tons of CO2 reduction per year by 2030, depending on CO2 breakthrough time and its net utilization factor. It may also help in freeing natural gas that could supply 12-20% of local energy needs extending its use with the CCS system. This study demonstrates a systematic modeling approach that quantifies complex interactions at the system level towards cleaner production practices.