Plans to use EOR on Alabama field
Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection — an important part of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology — is underway in the Citronelle Field of Mobile County, Alabama, as part of a pilot study of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
A project team led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham is conducting the injection. Study results of the 7,500-ton CO2 injection will provide estimates of oil yields from EOR and CO2 storage capacity in depleted oil reservoirs.
According to the US Department of Energy (DoE), CO2 injection has already helped recover nearly 1.5 billion barrels of oil from mature oil fields, yet the technology has not been deployed widely.
It is estimated that nearly 400 billion barrels of oil remain trapped in the ground. Funded through the DoE’s Office of Fossil Energy, the primary goal of the Citronelle Project is to demonstrate that remaining oil can be economically produced using CO2-EOR technology in untested areas of the US. This is expected to reduce dependency on oil imports, provide domestic jobs, and prevent the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The Citronelle Field is composed of sandstone reservoirs in a simple structural dome and has existing infrastructure that includes deep wells.
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