CO2 Conference Information

This year's CO2 Flooding Conference was held on December 9-12 in Midland, Texas. A new feature of the event called the EOR Carbon Management Workshop and was added as a separate workshop and included an all day session on Dec 9th followed by a 3/4 day facilities visit to the Amerada Hess Seminole Plant facilities 70 miles north of Midland. 102 persons attended the workshop which was devoted to emerging industry of capturing industrially vented or anthropogenic CO2 (called I-CO2), purifiying, compressing and injecting into mature oil reservoirs to simultaneously sequester CO2 and produce enhanced oil. The basics of CO2-EOR were covered along with presentations describing the growing worldwide interest in CO2 sequestration. Case history examples of EOR projects using I-CO2 were discussed together with new ways of looking at a penalty product (CO2) which could add to your bottom line in the form of current and probable future incentives to encourage I-CO2 capture. The fundamentals of an existing revenue stream derived from what is called an Emission Reduction Credit
(ERC) was discussed including how to qualifiy, contract, and transact an ERC. This emerging marketplace for ERC's was described. The field trip to Seminole provided the audience a chance to see an impressive and very successful example of a $200 million plant devoted to the capture and processing of CO2 to remove methane, NGL's, sulphurous compounds and water as well as providing recompression of the CO2 for reuse within the reservoir.

The CO2 Flooding Conference began on Dec 10th with its own field trip to the new CO2 flood at the North Hobbs Flood near Hobbs, New Mexico. The trip was coordinated by the Southwest Region of the PTTC and led by Oxy Permian personnel. Approximately 100 persons attended the field trip which described the design parameters, reservoir response expectations and surface facilities just put in place at the flood.

December 11th kicked off the CO2 Flooding Conference theme sessions in Midland with a Thursday morning session devoted to operational practices of CO2 flooding with an emphasis this year on surface facilities and pipelines. Results of a recent pressure test of the 30-year old Canyon Reef Carriers CO2 pipeline was one of the featured presentations. Thursday afternoon followed with four case history presentations including an electrical resistance tomography survey accomplished on a flood near Hobbs, results of the Monell pilot at the Patrick Draw field in Wyoming, and the attributes and results of two I-CO2 floods in northern Michigan.

Friday morning was devoted to large-scale CO2 floods with four presentations on SACROC (near Snyder, Tx), Weyburn (in southern Sasketchewan), a intensive reservoir characterization effort at the Seminole San Andres Unit and Anadarko's plans and forecast for their huge flood about to begin at the Salt Creek Field in Wyoming.

The Conference attendance would suggest a growing and worldwide interest in CO2 flooding as approximately 240 persons attended the sessions on Thursday and Friday with representatives from 12 different countries participating.