Wednesday, February 15, 2012

CO2 For Secondary Production in the Bakken? -- Will Be Studied -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Great article sent to me by Rick. Thank you.
For the first time, researchers will study whether carbon dioxide can be used to enhance oil recovered from wells in the Bakken formation.

The Environmental and Energy Research Center at Grand Forks will get $475,000 from the state’s Oil and Gas Research program to probe the question.

It’s expected the study will take 15 months and cost more than $1.3 million.
Other data points:
  • EERC says only 3 - 5 percent of original oil in place (OOIP) can be recovered through primary production (not all agree with that; that seems low)
  • Marathon Oil, Denbury Resources, and TAQA North will finance the study
  • in conventional oil plays, waterflooding is secondary production; most say that waterflooding will not work in tight shale, such as the Bakken
  • CO2 injection is generally considered enhanced oil recovery (EOR; tertiary production) but would be secondary production in the Bakken if waterflooding does not work
  • a spokesman says that CO2 has a high potential to work

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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2012 at 6:51 PM

    while reading this article I was thinking the oil companies in the Bakken should each contribute some small amount of money to this study. Looks like three of them will but wouldn't you think most (if not all) of them should considering the possible benefits? The return on that stipend could possibly be huge.

    I think it has been said that a single frack stage costs around $120,000. If all oil companies in the Bakken just skipped one frack stage on one well and gave that money to the project maybe it would help them immensely and possibly provide even better results.

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