Reducing carbon dioxide emissions with enhanced oil recovery projects - A life cycle assessment approach

Industries are investigating methods to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane and others). Several options have been proposed ranging from energy efficiency, to reforestation, to capture and sequestration in lakes, oceans or underground. The power generation and petroleum industries are considering greenhouse gas capture and sequestration methods to reduce their emissions to the atmosphere. Preferred options are the ones utilizing the CO2 as a product and therefore providing an additional valuable benefit to the production process. CO2 is widely used for enhanced oil recovery projects to extract more oil out of aging reservoirs. For this reason, storage Of CO2 in active reservoirs by using enhanced oil recovery is very attractive and would add to the extraction of oil the incentives of storing CO2 and reducing emissions. This work will investigate the benefits derived from storing CO2 in active reservoirs while recovering oil. We will demonstrate the potential for CO2 sequestration in a specific oil reservoir in Texas, as well as the mass balance of greenhouse gas emissions generated from the energy intensive process. This paper will also demonstrate how the overall sequestration efficiency can be enhanced by utilizing captured and recycled CO2 from natural gas treating plants instead of using CO2 from pure CO2 natural reservoirs.