US Says CO2 Injection Could Quadruple Oil Reserves

US Says CO2 Injection Could Quadruple Oil Reserves

that would make alaska's known fields be about 40 billion barrels

COSTLY?

A United Nations report in September said that burying large amounts of carbon dioxide could play a big role in fighting global warming, but would be a costly fix.

Electricity prices could typically rise by 25 to 80 percent if power plant operators adopted the technology, according the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We need to get rid of our oil dependance as soon as possible, not postpone it's production peak by a few years.
This method of CO2 injection will only make oil more expensive. A typical oil well is only drained for 50 or 60% (if I'm not mistaken). Good quality, light oil always flows on top. Older oil fields only produce thicker and soarer oil, which is more difficult to extract, and more expensive to refine. Very thick oil is only good for making asphalt/tarmac, many refineries can't even handle it, so a huge investment is needed in refineries as well.

So again, its much better to invest in alternatives.



[edit on 3-6-2006 by Zion Mainframe]

CO2 injection has been performed for decades to increase production.

No free lunch?

Weyburn, CO2 Injection and Carbon Sequestration

Finally, where does that leave us? Plainly, it leaves us with 130 million barrels of new oil (6.5 days of US consumption) and 13.8 million mt of new CO2 emissions (with a lifetime in the atmosphere of about 100 years), proving that you can not have your cake and eat it too or, to put it another way, there is no free lunch.

Capturing Carbon Dioxide

Even widespread adoption of CCS will not stop the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Only about a third of worldwide CO2 emissions arise from electricity generation, with much of the remainder coming from heating, industrial processes and transportation. Still, if we begin to apply a variety of CO2 reduction technologies in tandem, emissions can be held close to their current level, instead of doubling over the next 50 years, argues Stephen Pacala of Princeton University. These techniques include CCS as well as energy conservation, improved efficiency, and renewable or even nuclear energy sources. "As a species we are technologically ready to tackle the carbon and climate problems," he remarks.

Others predict that the planet's enormous geologic reserves will eventually be inadequate to hold all of the CO2 the world is likely to produce in the next hundred years. Klaus Lackner of Columbia University, for one, advocates sequestering the carbon in minerals like magnesium silicates, although currently the associated cost is much too high. Whatever the approach, "we need to do it now," he insists. "We cannot afford to sit back and say some great invention will come along sometime in the middle of the century."

Since most fields are injected with water and thus CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 (carbonic acid). Anyone do a study on what happens when you have tons and tons acid building up in underlying rock strata where there was none before?

Oceans Turning to Acid From Rise in CO2

Safe Storage of CO2 in Deep Saline Aquifers

Impacts of leaks
At low concentrations, CO2 is not directly hazardous to human health, but may detrimentally alter environmental processes. Vertical migration of leaking CO2 will be accompanied by dissolution into shallower aquifer waters. Dissolved CO2 hydrolyzes to form carbonic acid, which can alter pH. Because pH is a master variable in water-mediated chemical and biological reactions, a pH shift may cause undesirable changes in geochemistry, water quality, and ecosystem health. Examples include mobilization of toxic metals, leaching of important biological nutrients, and modification of proton gradients across biological membranes.

There's still a lot of loose ends to tie up on this theory, before it's put into widespread use.

Hi Regenmacher,

looks like a good way to screw up the already overstressed environment to me! I guess the loose ends will be tied up, but only if it makes "financial sense"

Hi bigX01 - Screwing the last few drops of oil out of Mother Earth is probably not the best way to go really.........

[edit on 6-3-2006 by maldives01]