I was referring to the bit from Barron's: principally the 2nd paragraph of the article.
Starting w the 1st sentence: the 1st 20% of a well's production does not necessarily gush out due to "natural pressure". The 2nd 20% can not necessarily be extracted using water and even if water flooding is possible and effective, then use of CO2 is not necessarily useful. If the reservoir rock contains a lot of water sensitive clay, then adding water is a bad idea. Likewise, CO2 does not always "love" oil and for oils with significant asphaltene concentrations, addition of CO2 can kill production.
CO2 is used extensively in west Texas and in southern Alberta because the oil is compatible with CO2 and bypass/fingering isn't too bad. Denbury has gotten a bunch of DOE money for injecting CO2 into reservoirs along the Gulf coast (principally Mississippi, I think) as part of CO2 sequestration projects even though most of the CO2 did not come from power plants (I could be wrong on that). In the case of w Texas it is cheap enough to pipe CO2 from natural CO2 reservoirs in Colorado. I don't know if the nice tax credit is still available for recycling CO2 from one reservoir to another (one of the greenhouse gas/climate change bills ~2009 established different credits for injecting 'anthropogenic' and natural CO2).
AI
