gaseous

[solarbird]

Kyoto signatories are going to solve a lot of their atmospheric carbon requirements by carbon sequestering - basically, storing CO₂ underground.

The Saudis are reportedly planning a massive gas injection programme as part of a plan to rehabilitate several of their older, mostly-closed fields, and get them back up to 500,000bpd each. The probability of success here seems slim, but they're confident they can do it and are certainly going to try. They want to use - you guessed it! - CO₂.

Matthew Simmons asked in his book where they're going to get the gas. He didn't know. Clearly, Kyoto signatories are going to have a marvelous export market in a valuable commodity if this works out.

I thought of this when I read about it in his book, but didn't really know what to do with it. Simmons knows oil, but since this isn't oil, he missed this bit of data. So I'm posting it here. The Saudis, by planning this particular style of gas-injection programme, clearly figured this out some time ago.

Comments

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

On the pessimistic side of things, if they're resorting to CO2 to rehabilitate old fields, that's another sign that the main sources of production are not in great shape. There's no incentive for marginal production sources if the main sources are in good shape. My guess is this is a subtle indication that Gharwar is nearing its peak and that they need marginal sources to increase production to meet expected demand at the current prices.

So, let's hope this works and works better than water injection, which increases production in the short-term but probably damages long-term production capability. I suspect that it will work, but with the predictable downside, and that the gas will eventually reach the atmosphere anyway. So it's just delaying both problems to increase the short-term upside.

[solarbird]

From my reading, it seems clear that water injection, properly managed, does no damage to a field and helps sustain delivery flow - flattening the peak recovery period, essentially. It can also, again from my reading, delay the formation of a gas cap, by keeping the oil at a pressure that prohibits outgassing. So as far as I can tell, properly managed, it's not at all a negative.

Gas injection has been tried before, and the fields where they're talking about trying it are all in tertiary recovery anyway, so they're a good experimental environment. The only thing I question is their confidence that they'll be able to get and sustain 500Kbpd from these fields over an extended period, if at all.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

At least in some cases you can get CO₂ from gas fields. I recall reading that some company was going to pump what came along with the gas they were extracting back underground to meet emissions requirements.

[solarbird]

Huh! Checking some references, you are correct! I would have thought the CO₂ in question would have come from burning off unprofitable combustible dome gasses, but in fact sometimes you get a significant mix of carbon dioxide directly.

Where's that "the more you know" graphic when you need it?

[solarbird]

Ah, but anyway, you'd still need to get more somewhere - you'd need enough to replace the pressure provided by the profitable gasses and the actual oil extraction, which would be quite a lot to have to bring in from someplace. Hence, the market opportunity for Kyoto signatories.