CAN CO2 ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY GIVE NEW LIFE TO ILLINOIS BASIN FIELDS?

The United States remains the world leader in enhanced oil recovery via carbon dioxide (CO₂) injection (CO₂-EOR) with over 100 active projects resulting in more than 100 million barrels of production annually. Early work by the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium estimated that introducing CO₂-EOR technology across the Illinois Basin could boost cumulative production by a total of 0.9 to 1.3 billion barrels. This presentation synthesizes the historical and current research efforts aimed at realizing the potential of CO₂-EOR in Illinois Basin oil fields. Only a handful of pilot projects have been attempted to date; those projects indicate that incremental oil recovery factors of around 12 percent for miscible floods and 6 percent for immiscible floods are in line with expectations from other U.S. projects. The U.S. Department of Energy and consortia of public-private partnerships currently support several projects to explore the potential of CO₂-EOR in the Illinois Basin, including the techno-economic assessment of integrated system infrastructure to capture CO₂ from industrial sources and transport large volumes (totaling 50 million metric tons or more) for storage in oil fields and other geologic reservoirs. The recent development of a large-volume CO₂ capture facility (one million metric ton annually) and new incentives in the U.S. tax code suggest that key hurdles to earlier adoption of the technology may now be overcome. The ultimate hurdle to advancement is developing a business case for investing in CO₂-EOR infrastructure deployment. We also present results from a newly developed software package called SimCCS Gateway to illustrate how uncertainty and financial risk can now be incorporated into decision making for Illinois Basin stakeholders interested in CO₂-EOR technology.