Editorial Comment

	Vol. 227 No. 4
PERRY A. FISCHER, EDITOR

The CO₂ Wedgie. I’ve long suspected that it was all a plan, even if not a well-orchestrated one. It’s the “Wedge” strategy, the idea being to drive a wedge between people, the industries they work in and their political parties. No finer wedge has ever been created than carbon dioxide. I’ve suspected that US Democratic and Republican operatives, like James Carvel and Karl Rove, play a role in this, as do many leaders from our industry and from the environmental side.

Just today, two emails illustrated the point. They were sent to me by an environmental group, with the usual Evil Big Oil banter, and a very conservative, pro-oil group (that shall remain nameless out of decorum, good sense, and fear). It seems that the UK formally announced it would not likely meet its Kyoto Protocol target, namely, to cut CO₂ emissions to 20% less than 1990 levels by 2010.

To believe the two radical emails, no greater sin could be committed by the UK. Greenpeace accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of “fiddling while the world burns.” The other side said that present efforts to meet Kyoto goals have already resulted in, “higher energy bills . . . significant job losses . . . and damage to the economy,” all of which will get much worse if the UK continues its folly. Both emails were obvious propaganda, which carefully avoided what I wanted to know: By how much would the UK miss its goal?

A little digging revealed that the UK government said it projected achieving only 75% to 90% of its Kyoto targets. To me, that’s back-page news, barely worthy of mention, let alone vicious rhetoric.

These wedges are driven deeply, for reasons far more sinister and noble than mere combustion by-product gas. They preserve our family’s values – reverence for our forefathers’ ideology, hope that our children will grow up in the right future, believing the right things – but mostly, they sustain the need for two opposing sides, without which none of this rancor would be possible. Along the way, like a dog picks up ticks, each side picks up associated bits of political and philosophical doctrinal drivel, and makes financial contributions to their cause. Wedges work.

Filthy, wonderful lucre. I’ve been wondering for some time: Instead of venting CO₂ to the atmosphere, why not use it to make money, for enhanced oil and gas recovery? The oilpatch does it every day. It began in West Texas in 1972, has been used extensively there and in eastern New Mexico, and is now beginning to spread.

I’ve written about subjects such as pumping CO₂ into coalbed methane reservoirs, where it is absorbed into the coal, causing it to release more methane. And of course, this journal has featured many CO₂ enhanced oil recovery articles, and will continue to do so. Although these were win-win projects, intuition told me that they were niche situations, not expandable on a wide scale. But my intuition appears to have been wrong.

The US Department of Energy recently released several research reports and news briefs about CO₂ for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The conclusions are astounding. By all accounts, these are well researched, not at all “pie in the sky” documents. The gist of them is that the US could dramatically boost its oil recovery by using more CO₂.

Typically, about 33% of the original oil in place is recovered. Using traditional thermal and CO₂-enhanced oil recovery technologies, about 36% or so can be recovered. State-of-the-art CO₂-EOR technology can raise this to nearly 48%. Development and successful application of next generation (but achievable) CO₂-EOR technologies can increase this to 61% and, in geologically favorable reservoirs, to over 80%.

Part of what makes this doable is a combination of three things: 1) new technologies combined with superior reservoir understanding; 2) new CO₂ supplies, brought on, in part, from sequestration needs; and 3) higher oil prices. Cost estimates seemed thorough and feasible. They include CO₂ costs as a percent of the oil price, both purchased (5%) and recycled (1%); capital investment; the cost of a fully staffed technical team (geologists, reservoir engineers and economic analysts); the cost of observation wells, downhole sensors, and periodic 4D seismic for monitoring.

CO₂ has become an increasingly valuable commodity. However, for oilfield use, it’s been limited in supply and use. But with sequestration, that would change considerably. A coal gasification plant in North Dakota is already selling CO₂ for enhanced recovery in Canada’s Weyburn oil field. In addition, CO₂ can be obtained from power plants, gas processing, fertilizer, ethanol and other industrial processes. There are numerous ongoing DOE projects showing that we can indeed recover an enormous amount of additional oil, if we can just get enough CO₂.

How much more oil? The estimates range from 89 billion to 430 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. For comparison, Saudi Arabia has 261 billion barrels. As one might expect, the high number makes some optimistic projections, but the low number is reasonably conservative – and it’s still more than four times the present US proved oil reserves of 21 billion barrels.

Shell Global Solutions President Greg Lewin recently underscored the increasing potential of CO₂ as a valued commodity. He predicted that coal gasification will develop rapidly and that CO₂ sequestration risk will be low. He added that Shell is “. . . focusing on value chains that deliver (a money-making) result.” He cited mineralization, where CO₂ is processed with calcium or magnesium to make a range of saleable products for industrial or domestic use.

So, the challenge becomes: How does our industry get its hands on all of that CO₂ while in no way saying that it is doing so to meet present or future Kyoto Protocol goals? Well, that’s simple. First, ignore any KP goals, and don’t set any new ones (Goals? What goals?). Second, create a new label to operate under, perhaps an acronym, like:

      Carbon dioxide
      Re-injection for
      Additional
      Petroleum

Third, if asked, pretend that you do not know what “sequestration” is. Say something like, “Isn’t that what they do to prisoners?” Better still, mispronounce it.

If we do this right, we can make a heap of oil and a mountain of money. And what about the environmentalists? Hey, they’re on their own; let them get their own acronym. What’s most important, is that we keep the Wedge in place.

God help us, should we ever find ourselves on the same side.