257. U.S. DISCOVERS ANOTHER SAUDI ARABIA IN ITS OLD OIL WELLS

In 240. CLEANING THE PETROLEUM CRACK PIPE, I discussed EOR using CO2, and how it can be used to get more oil out of old holes we already know about.

The DOE issued a press release on this subject on March 3, 2006, and the figures are pretty remarkable. The DOE calls CO2-EOR a "game changer" and says:

State-of-the-art enhanced oil recovery with carbon dioxide, now recognized as a potential way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, could add 89 billion barrels to the recoverable oil resources of the United States, the Department of Energy has determined. Current U.S. proved reserves are 21.9 billion barrels.

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

Beginning 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; and an additional 430 billion barrels would make it first, ahead of Saudi Arabia with 261 billion barrels.Source

That last bit about surpassing Saudi Arabia is obviously a little too optimistic, but you gotta admire that chutzpa!

It does make you wonder though: If CO2-EOR can quintuple reserves in a played-out, running-on-fumes province like the US, what's it going to do to reserves in Saudi Arabia, or reserves world-wide, when it really catches on? The mind reels.

There is lots more interesting data on EOR (and other related phenomena) in the various reports referenced by the above press release, but let's focus in on one detail. This is the chart for already discovered oil in the U.S. (Source, p. 2):

Let's compare this with Colin Campbell's country assessment for the U.S. from ASPO newsletter #23 (click to enlarge):

Hmmm... Looks like we've got a major SNAFU here. Campbell gives a total past+future production for the U.S. of 195Gb, while the DOE report gives actual past+reserves (to date) as 208Gb. And that's not even counting EOR. If we add in EOR, we get 308Gb. And that's just from existing fields. Undiscovered fields, reserve growth and U.S. oil sands have the potential to add 300Gb on top of that (Source: same as above, Table EX-1, p. EX-4). And even after all that, there'll still be 1,124Gb left in the crackpipe in the U.S. alone, so we can go after that with whatever funky technologies we come up with in the meantime.

On the one hand, U.S. production using conventional methods has been on the decline for a long time, but the production numbers are getting lower and lower, and that means it is getting easier and easier to reverse the declining trend. After all, you can't decline past zero.

On the other hand, we've got this new "game changing" technology, which is catching on and even now producing 660,000bd world-wide according to Oil & Gas Journal. So it looks to me like just a matter of time before the U.S. decline reverses, and we get a secondary EOR hump. Hopefully, Colin Campbell will live long enough to witness the glory of it all.

This further reinforces how misleading the "Growing Gap" can be. The U.S. hits on the idea of pumping CO2 into its old reservoirs, and bing: 7 and a half Prudhoe Bays worth of new oil appear. So where is Campbell going to put that oil into his scary "Growing Gap" curve? Well... probably... he's going to try to ignore it and downplay it for as long as possible. When that fails, he'll be like the Andrew Fastow of peak oil, desperately trying to squirrel it away in the past somewhere through "backdating", so the new discovery numbers don't exceed the expectations of the peak oil community and cause his theory to go bankrupt.

-- by JD

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Thanks to Jan-Willem Bats at Our Technological Future for the tip. Be sure to visit Jan-Willem's site and check out the totally amazing video clip of the "Robotic Pack Mule". It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'!!!