CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Technology Could Boost U.S. Oil Supplies

March 10, 2006

The 89-billion-barrel increase in resources was one of a number of possible scenarios identified in a series of CO2 sequestration assessments done for DOE. The assessments also found that, in the longer term, multiple advances in technology and widespread sequestration of industrial CO2 could eventually add as much as 430 billion barrels to the technically recoverable resource.

Completed to comply with the National Energy Policy Act of 2005 and other congressional directives, the assessments looked at maximizing oil production and accelerating the productive use of CO2 in all categories of petroleum resources, including undiscovered oil and new resources in the residual oil zone. The findings are consolidated in the February 2006 DOE report Undeveloped Domestic Oil Resources: The Foundation for Increasing Oil Production and a Viable Domestic Oil Industry.

Efforts to develop the 89-billion-barrel addition to resources would depend on the availability of commercial CO2 in large volumes. If this oil could be added to the category of proven reserves, the U.S. would have the fifth largest oil reserves in the world behind Iraq, which has 115 billion barrels, based on present estimates. An additional 430 billion barrels would make it first, ahead of Saudi Arabia with 261 billion barrels.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).