Working group on CO2-EOR

This group is no longer active.

Injection of CO2 in oil fields has for many years been used as a method to enhance oil recovery (EOR), primarily in the United States, where the CO2 mostly comes from reservoirs with naturally occurring CO2. CO2 may also be used to obtain recovery from residual oil zones. The CO2 injected will be recycled after a while but in general most the imported CO2 is permanently stored. Offshore CO2-EOR has some separate issues, including

  • Limited availability of CO2

  •  Non-optimized well locations

  • No existing pipelines

  • Facilities and wells not corrosion resistant

  • Limited weight and space available for topsides separation, resulting in  costly retrofits or additional installations

  • Higher cost level than onshore, including loss of production due to shut down in retrofit period

  • Logistics between onshore CO2 source and offshor

    Activités were:

Limited interaction USA-Norway on CO2-EOR so far. However, the Norwegian side will continue to focus on technology development funded by the CLIMIT-demo program. A call spring 2015 on CO2-EOR in collaboration with North America resulted in two projectawards:

  • CO2 Storage from Lab to On-Shore Field Pilots Using CO2-Foam for Mobility Control in CCUS ; University of Bergen w/partners Statoil, Total, Delft Univ, Shell, Schlumberger, Stanford, Rice Univ, Univ of Texas

  •  Improved performance of CO2 EOR and storage by mobility control of CO2, SINTEF Petroleum w/partners: Stiftelsen SINTEF, Univ of Calgary, Univ of Pittburgh, + industry (still no commitments)

Norwegian activities on the topic are ( all with CLIMIT funding):