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Fossil Energy Research Benefits

Enhanced Oil Recovery

EOR helps increase domestc oilsupplies while also providing a wayto safely and permanently store CO 2

underground.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is a way to squeeze out additional, hard-to-recover barrels of oil remaining inolder elds following conventionalproduction operations. It can also beused to permanently store carbondioxide (CO 2) underground.

Thanks in part to innovations supported by the O ce of Fossil Energys NationalEnergy Technology Laboratory (NETL) over the past 30 years, the United States is a world leader in the number of EOR projects (200) and volume of oil production (over

760,000 barrels daily) from this method. This represents nearly 14 percent of totalU.S. production.

Although there are other methods (such as steam and chemical injection), CO 2 injection is responsible for the largest single portion (40 percent) of U.S. EORproduction. EOR is a mature (40+ years) and proven technology for increasing oilproduction and safely transporting and storing carbon dioxide permanently in

underground reservoirs.

EOR is a way to recoveraddi onal domes c oilresources from older

elds and permanentlystore carbon dioxide

underground. (Illustra on:Clean Air Task Force,available at: h p://www.coaltransi on.org/pages/ carbon_storage/30.php .)

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U.S. Department of Energy

O F E y

Last Updated: June 2012

www.fossil.energy.gov

Launched in 2000, the Weyburn-Midale CO 2 Project in Saskatchewan, Canada,is the worlds largest full-scale, in- eld study of CO 2 injec on and storage indepleted oil elds. When completed, the 11-year Interna onal Energy Agency

project (funded in part by DOE) will permanently store 40 million metric tons ofCO2 while increasing oil produc on by 18,000 barrels per day.

F Ab u E d O R v 9 The U.S. D p m E (DOE) began funding CO 2 EOR research in

the late 1970s to improve processes and demonstrate them in the eld.

9 CO2 injec on, the largest single recovery method for EOR, daily produces over308,000 b , or slightly over 5 p of total U.S. oil produc on.

9 About 63 m metric tons of CO 2 are used yearly for EOR in the UnitedStates. Of this total, 84 p comes from naturally occurring sources.

9 CO2 injec on has helped recover a total of more than 1.5 b b of oilfrom mature U.S. elds.

9 The U.S. Energy Informa on Administra on projects CO 2 EOR will account for11 p of cumula ve lower 48 onshore oil produc on from 2010 to 2035.

9 EOR bene ts U.S. energy security by helping du the need formp . It has great poten al for environmental bene t as one means for

p m CO2 m from power plants and industrial sources.

Sources: NETL; Oil & Gas Journal, April 2, 2012, pages 48-69.