Whiting to buy power plant carbon dioxide for EOR

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 22 -- For enhancing oil recovery, Whiting Petroleum Corp. signed a 15-year agreement to buy carbon dioxide from a planned Permian basin coal-fueled power plant at Penwell, Tex., near Odessa.

The sellers of the CO₂ are Summit Power Group LLC and Blue Strategies LLC. Summit expects to start construction of the plant by yearend and commence operations in late 2014 or early 2015.

Whiting plans to purchase 80 MMcfd of compressed CO₂ during the first 5 years of the plant's operation, which is about 60% of the CO₂ that the plant will capture. After 5 years, Whiting will gradually buy less CO₂ although it has an option to extend purchases.

In the Permian basin fields, each 6 Mcf of CO₂ injected can recover about 1 bbl of oil, according to the companies selling the CO₂.

Summit said its Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) will be a first-of-its-kind, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) 400 Mw power-polygen plant. It is designed to capture 90% of the CO₂, 99% of the sulfur, more than 95% of the mercury, and eliminate more than 90% nitrogen oxides produced by the process.

The plant received a final air quality permit last December.

Summit and Blue Strategies partnered in October 2009 to market TCEP’s 2.5 million tons/year of CO₂ to oil producers in the West Texas Permian basin.

The agreement with Whiting is the first of several CO₂ off-take agreements with TCEP that the companies expect to sign.

TCEP received a $450 million award in 2010 from the US Department of Energy’s clean coal power initiative.

Whiting operates CO₂-EOR floods in Postle field, Texas County, Okla. and in North Ward Estes field, Ward and Winkler Counties, Tex.