The geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in oil reservoirs offers a novel, win-win approach to mitigate climate change while enhancing production from mature oilfields. The Weyburn oilfield, operated by EnCana Corporation, is Canada's largest commercial enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project. Discovered 50 years ago, this field has a new life with EOR; 130 million barrels of incremental oil are slated to be recovered. CO2 has been injected into this 25 to 34 degree API oilfield since 2000, making valuable use of a by-product that would have otherwise been emitted from Dakota Gasification Company's coal gasification facility located in the northern United States. The Weyburn oilfield, currently producing 23,000 bbls/d, is projected to store 14 million net tonnes of CO2 over the EOR life, equal to taking about 3.2 million cars off the road for one year.
The Weyburn oilfield has also served as the highly coveted, commercial-scale laboratory for the IEA GHG Weyburn CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project. This multi-party, international research project, run under the auspices of the International Energy Agency, recently concluded that storage of CO2 in an oil reservoir is viable and safe over the long term, thus providing a good foundation towards development of solid policy, regulations and operating practices for future CO2 storage/EOR. This project also demonstrates the power of collaborative partnerships between governments, researchers and industry to unlock value through technology.
Coordinated by the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (Saskatchewan, Canada), the project was funded by 15 public and private sector institutions including the United States Department of Energy, European Community, and Natural Resources Canada. Industry participants included EnCana, BP, ChevronTexaco, Dakota Gasification Company, ENAA (Japan), Nexen, SaskPower, TransAlta and Total. The project involved 24 research and consulting organizations in Canada, Europe and the United States.
As one of the world's leading independent oil and gas companies, EnCana strives to make efficient use of resources and to minimize our environmental footprint. Weyburn is an example of that commitment.
The Weyburn oilfield in southeast Saskatchewan, operated by EnCana Corporation of Calgary, Alberta, is demonstrating that oil production can be increased in an environmentally responsible manner through underground injection of carbon dioxide (CO2). As such, the geological storage of CO2 in oil reservoirs offers a novel, environmental and economic winwin approach to mitigate climate change by storing CO2 which would otherwise have been emitted while enhancing the oil recovery from mature oilfields and thus improving the security of crude supplies.
The Weyburn oilfield is Canada's largest commercial CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project. It was also the field test-site for the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Weyburn CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project (IEA Project) which concluded its first phase in September 2004. The Phase I project report, released in September 2004 at the international Greenhouse Gas Technologies Conference in Vancouver, concluded that geological conditions in the Weyburn oil field are favourable for long-term storage of CO2 and could be monitored with appropriate tools and technologies.
