By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Sept. 6 -- A project to inject carbon dioxide into Alabama's largest oil field to improve recovery and later store the greenhouse gas will have its costs shared by the US Department of Energy.
DOE plans to provide nearly $3 million of the $6 million cost of the enhanced oil recovery project in Citronelle field operated by Plano, Tex.-based Denbury Resources Inc. in Mobile County 25 miles northwest of Mobile. The project could recover 64 million bbl of oil, DOE said.
The University of Alabama-Birmingham proposed the project to DOE. After economic oil production ceases, it calls for storage in the reservoir and adjacent formations of CO2 produced from the combustion of fossil fuels in power plants and other processes.
Southern Co., Atlanta, one of the country's largest electricity generators, is evaluating the capacity of such reservoirs as possible locations for permanent sequestration of CO2 separated from coal and natural gas combustion products in its power plants, DOE said.
Project goals are to provide oil field operators and CO2 producers with improved estimates of the oil yields from EOR and the capacity of depleted reservoirs to sequester CO2. Another objective is to improve reliability of computer simulations of the oil yield and sequestration capacity of a given geologic formation and the rate at which CO2 can be injected.
Other project participants are the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, Alabama A&M University, Huntsville; Geological Survey of Alabama; and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
Denbury also plans CO2 EOR injection projects in Tinsley and Eucutta fields in Mississippi. The natural CO2 to be injected will originate in that state (OGJ Online, Nov. 28, 2005).
