CO2 Injection System Too Expensive, North Sea Oil Producers Say - Reuters

[hatrack]

LONDON - "A UK proposal to inject carbon dioxide into ageing North Sea oil and gas fields, extending their life while reducing greenhouse gas levels, is too expensive for energy companies, a government study found last week.

The UK hopes to combine the two goals by using carbon dioxide (CO2) to pump extra oil and then keeping the gas underground in depleted reservoirs. The increased oil recovery could partially offset the cost of storing the carbon dioxide. "This study has confirmed that CO2-based enhanced oil recovery is not currently an attractive investment to North Sea oil producers," the UK's Department of Trade and Industry said in a statement.

EDIT

"The level of support needed to bridge the economic gap and encourage investment in enhanced oil recovery is uncertain," the study concluded. "The main approach available to government would be to adjust the tax system applying to oil production in the UK North Sea to reduce any barriers."

The study consulted leading oil producers such as BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , ExxonMobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) , as well as power generators including Powergen and Scottish Power (SPW.L: Quote, Profile, Research)."

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24659/story.htm

[Richardo]

1. Oh well. What's the *real* demand for fizzy oil anyway?

:)

[Nihil]

2. Just carry on producing CO2 instead

Can't let those nice big flares on every rig go out, can we?
People might think we care about the planet rather than just wanting
to profit from raping it.

[TX-RAT]

3. CO2 is inert

[NNadir]

4. Unless of course you happen to be an infrared ray.

[Nihil]

5. And your point was ...?

> CO2 is inert

Er yes, and generated by the big flares on the top of most rigs
(as I said in my previous post) which is where the "excess" gas is
burnt off for no gain whatsoever - CO2 and water being the main
products of this particular waste of energy.

So, instead of removing atmospheric CO2 (by reservoir pumping) the oil
companies prefer to add to the atmospheric CO2, hence my comment ...

[NNadir]

6. I was not responding to your post but the "CO2 is inert" post.

Actually CO2 is not inert in a chemical sense, of course. It is an active compound that is not only biotransformed but is used industrially, most prominently for the manufacture of urea.

I contend that CO2 itself will ultimately be the source of most motor fuels through the input of nuclear and solar generated energy via hydrogenation.

[Nihil]

11. Ummm

> I was not responding to your post but the "CO2 is inert" post.

So was I! :hi:

[Bdog]

7. When the price of oil gets high enough and/or when production drops

then CO2 injection will become profitable in the North Sea...there are plenty of other old fields that CO2 injection is profitable.

http://www.oogc.com/what_we_do_frameset/eor.htm
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)

Enhanced recovery uses sophisticated technology to recover additional reserves or prolong production from older, mature oil fields after primary recovery methods have run their course. By increasing production efficiency, EOR methods can prolong the economic life of older fields by as much as 30 years.

EOR projects may involve gas re-injection, carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding or horizontal drilling techniques. Our outstanding success with EOR projects in Qatar, Russia, and the United States has made Occidental an industry leader in this highly technical field.

[NNadir]

8. I have this wonderful vision of the cars circling the Arc d'Triomphe in

Paris, going around the circle, little flexible vaccuum cleaner hoses connected to their tailpipes, the hoses running connected all the way to Calais, running under the Channel, North through England and Scotland right out to the little pressured undersea oil fields off Norway. I can't think of anything more fun that highly pressured oil under the ocean.

I imagine that if they wind the Arc too tight, it will pop out and fly all the way to the moon. Maybe therefore they should reverse traffic flow every ten minutes.

God knows it would be a terrible, terrible, terrible matter if we failed to get the very last drop of oil, that filthy, obnoxious, toxic pollutant that for which we all are willing to do anything.

This sounds like a very rational risk minimized choice to me.

[Township75]

9. This process of EOR has been in use in the US since at least the

1980's. It should have only become more effecient to do this. I am curious why it has worked economically here but not over there. Maybe it is only used on land here.

[NNadir]

10. It has to do with distance shipped.

Gases are in general very difficult to ship long distances. Carbon dioxide is liquifiable, with a critical temperature of around 31C if my memory serves me well, but liquification requires pressurized lines and energy, both of which are kind of expensive for servicing dying oil fields. It is a very different matter to ship carbon dioxide to the North Sea then it is to move it from a coal fired plant in Kansas to an nearby depleted field.

The question is, do really want the oil, whatever extremes we can imagine for getting it?

Oil is, with the exception of coal, one of the most environmentally repulsive fuels. The damage done by shipping it, refining it, storing it and burning it is nearly incalculable. It is a disaster we of course accept with familiarity, but simply because we ignore this travesty does not mean it will not kill us. (Tigers for instance sneak up with stealth.)

A wise environmentally sustainable system mimics living systems, which essentially makes use of all materials. One species waste is another species food. (This is the essence of the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle, both of which were displaced from their old equilibria positions by 19th and 20th century human industrial thinking.)

I think if one is asking a question like "how do I dump substance A or substance B" rather than "how can we use substance A or substance B" one is thinking very poorly indeed. Deep welling CO2 may sound like a "use" but it is not, since the "dump" and its consequences do not really go away. It would be far more useful to hydrogenate CO2 and make new motor fuels. In this case, automobiles would simply be another cog in the carbon cycle. The issue is not carbon, but energy itself, specifically primary energy. This is the area that needs development. Fortunately their are excellent technologies for providing primary energy.

[Bdog]

12. CryoCar and sequestered carbon dioxide

http://www.aa.washington.edu/AERP/CRYOCAR/CryoCar.htm
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a new zero-emission automobile propulsion concept that uses liquid nitrogen as the fuel. The principle of operation is like that of a steam engine, except there is no combustion involved. Instead, liquid nitrogen at –320° F (–196° C) is pressurized and then vaporized in a heat exchanger by the ambient temperature of the surrounding air. This heat exchanger is like the radiator of a car but instead of using air to cool water, it uses air to heat and boil liquid nitrogen. The resulting high-pressure nitrogen gas is fed to an engine that operates like a reciprocating steam engine, converting pressure to mechanical power. The only exhaust is nitrogen, which is the major constituent of our atmosphere.

The process to manufacture liquid nitrogen in large quantities can be environmentally very friendly, even if fossil fuels are used to generate the electric power required. The exhaust gases produced by burning fossil fuels in a power plant contain not only carbon dioxide and gaseous pollutants, but also all the nitrogen from the air used in the combustion. By feeding these exhaust gases to the nitrogen liquefaction plant, the carbon dioxide and other undesirable products of combustion can be condensed and separated in the process of chilling the nitrogen, and thus no pollutants need be released to the atmosphere by the power plant. The sequestered carbon dioxide and pollutants could be injected into depleted gas and oil wells, deep mine shafts, deep ocean subduction zones, and other repositories from which they will not diffuse back into the atmosphere, or they could be chemically processed into useful or inert substances. Consequently, the implementation of a large fleet of liquid nitrogen vehicles could have much greater environmental benefits than just reducing urban air pollution as desired by current zero-emission vehicle mandates.

[NNadir]

13. Could should would as opposed to IS. Fossil fuels suck 100% of the time.

Even if you could contain all of the carbon dioxide by wasting huge amounts of energy on the liquification of nitrogen (have you ever even HEARD of the second law of thermodynamics?) you would still have the extreme environmental cost of mining, transporting, refining and otherwise horrid costs of fossil fuels. I would imagine that you have never stood at the edge of an open pit coal strip mine when you write that liquid nitrogen "can be environmentally very friendly, even if fossil fuels are used to generate the electric power required," or considered acid leach and heavy metal leaching that have destroyed entire ecosystems. I know for a fact that you do not shed one tear for the thousands of coal miners who have died in the former Soviet Union in just the last several years. (This thread for instance passed here with no comment: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x7136). I suppose too that you've spent very little energy contemplating Prince William Sound, or the sinking of Tankers off the coast of Calais and off the coast of Spain or any of the other "thousand natural shocks" fossil fuels have give heir to.

The fact is, that fossil fuels are NOT sustainable under any conditions as the world is finding out at vast expense.

I remind you that you have spoken at great length that the death of even 1,000 people in a 50 year time span is cause enough - in your mind, not mine - to shut down the demonstrated nuclear industry that cleanly provides almost 20% of the world's electrical energy. I remind you also that nuclear energy functions not in some far off fantasy land, but RIGHT NOW. I remind you also that the earth's atmosphere is collapsing not in some far off fantasy future but RIGHT NOW.

These days one feels less and less optimistic about the energy future, mostly because one feels less and less optimistic that critical thinking will be valued over wishful thinking.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bdog]

15. The physics behind the CryoCar is sound.

If you can find something wrong with the physics then please point it out.

A vague reference to the second law of thermodynamics is well...vauge.

[NNadir]

16. Well, let's see, if you convert energy from one form from another

you lose some energy as heat, 100% of the time every time.

This should be self evident to anyone who knows anything about energy: dG = dH - TdS. The S term is of course, entropy. If the change in entropy is zero (which never happens) you can convert energy for free. (The derivation of the Gibbs Free Energy expression usually depends on the case where PV work is involved, as it is here.)

In this case the waste heat is the heat from the inefficiency of the compressors, the heat of electrical resistance, etc, etc.

This is the same shell game as the "hydrogen economy" endorsed by that great scientist George W. Bush, especially if you are burning fossil fuels for the purpose. If you burn hydrogen in your car, you feel wonderful about how non-polluting your car is, but, if you generate the hydrogen via a fossil fuel intermediate, you are in fact creating more pollution than you would if you simply burned the fossil fuel in the engine.

With nuclear generated or solar generated electricity, it would probably will be better from external (environmental) cost, but certainly not in economic costs.

[Bdog]

17. Apparently

the University of Washington’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics has a better grasp of the physics,...but I already knew that.

http://www.aa.washington.edu/AERP/CRYOCAR/HeatExchanger/Propulsion.htm

Large scale liquid nitrogen production has its advantages as well. Figure 4 illustrates a concept in which the nitrogen liquefaction process is driven by a natural gas-fired power plant. Rather than operating on the ambient air, the liquefaction plant uses the exhaust from the gas turbine. In the process of obtaining the nitrogen, oxygen (a marketable commodity), is also liquefied. Moreover, the carbon dioxide from the power cycle combustion process can be condensed from the exhaust stream. A modern combined-cycle, gas turbine power plant can produce enough energy to liquefy up to 70% of its own exhaust – most of which is nitrogen – while sublimating virtually all of the CO2. This can then be disposed of in several ways less harmful to the environment than simply venting it to the atmosphere.,, This process raises the possibility of creating a liquid nitrogen-based transportation infrastructure that produces no atmospheric CO2 emissions, and is the subject of further study.



It is true that producing liquid nitrogen from air requires energy but it can be done in such a way as to prevent the release of any pollutants into the atmosphere, even if the energy is derived from fossil fuels. This is how: The exhaust gases produced by burning fossil fuels in a power plant contain not only carbon dioxide and other gaseous pollutants, but also all the nitrogen from the air used in the combustion. Instead of supplying ambient air to the nitrogen liquefying plant, these exhaust gases will be fed to it. Thus, as the gases are cooled in the process of liquefying the nitrogen, the carbon dioxide and other undesirable products of combustion will freeze out from the nitrogen, and no pollutants will be released to the atmosphere by the power plant. The frozen pollutants will be either sequestered by injecting them into depleted gas and oil wells, deep mine shafts, and other repositories from which they will not diffuse back into the atmosphere, or they will be chemically processed into useful or inert substances. This aspect of the liquid nitrogen car propulsion concept is what makes it a truly zero-emission alternative.

[LeftCoast]

18. Gentlemen,

While the cryocar discussion is interesting it has little or nothing to do with the topic of this thread. If you would like to continue discussing the cryocar would you please start a separate thread to discuss it. Thanks.

[NNadir]

19. Sorry about that. Actually we had a silly thread on that subject.

It was pretty much as useless as the discussion herein. I really need to stop discussing religion.