Hill Heat

The Subcommittee will examine the underground injection of carbon dioxide as a method for increasing production from domestic oil and gas fields while decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

Witnesses:

Panel 1

• Timothy Spisak, Chief, Fluid Minerals Division, Bureau of Land Management
• Scott Klara, Director, Strategic Center for Coal, National Energy Technology Laboratory

Panel 2

• Tracy Evans, Senior Vice President of Reservoir Engineering, Denbury Resources, Incorporated
• William Roby, Vice President, Worldwide Engineering and Technical Services, Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation
• Dr. Greg Kunkel, Vice President, Environmental Affairs, Tenaska, Incorporated
• Dr. Ian Duncan, Associate Director, Earth and Environmental Systems, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin
• Mark Demchuk, Team Lead, Weyburn, EnCana Oil and Gas Partnership

From E&E News:

A major 2007 report by the National Petroleum Council - an advisory body to DOE - also touted the potential of the technique as a way to help slow declines in U.S. oil production and address climate change. The report called for streamlining regulations and expedited permitting of enhanced recovery projects, pipelines and related infrastructure.

The report notes that the oil industry is already using naturally occuring CO2 for enhanced recovery projects without trying to store the CO2 underground permanently. The technology could be modified with “relative ease” to emphasize storage, the report said, adding that industrial sources of CO2 can also be used.

Enhanced oil recovery would likely only provide a small fraction of the capacity needed for CO2 sequestration, “it does offer a strong technology bridge to carbon sequestration technologies and should be encouraged as an important element of a CCS [carbon capture and storage] strategy,” the report noted.

But not everyone sees using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery as a promising way to help fight global warming. Joseph Romm, a climate expert with the liberal Center for American Progress, says it is a bad idea because the gains of storing the carbon are negated through the refining and burning of the recovered oil.