This course will provide an overview of the modern day practices of carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). CO2-EOR is the leading EOR technique for light oils and has grown to 80 active projects worldwide with an estimated 30 in various planning stages today. New sources of CO2 are expected to become available around the world as energy demand grows and as concerns over CO2 emissions from new energy sources require capture of these emissions. Application of CO2-EOR techniques has been primarily limited in the past due to two factors: the lack of nearby CO2 sources and excessive volatility in oil prices. In this new world environment wherein oil prices are high and CO2-EOR provides a potential sink for large amounts of captured CO2, an exciting growth environment should materialize.

Screening of candidate reservoirs will be covered along with discussion of conventional CO2 sources used in the past and the coming new era of CO2 sources. The reservoir attributes of the existing 30-year database of CO2 floods will be reviewed. Oil recovery from beneath the conventional oil column will be addressed. These intervals of high water content and smaller percentages of oil, called transition or residual oil zones, produce only water on primary or secondary recovery, have become economic CO2 targets today, and can represent a huge potential resource in many parts of the country. Some of the tools to detect and quantify these residual oil zone targets will be addressed.

The CO2-EOR experience in the eastern region of the U.S. has been limited to a few projects due to the lack of high volume reliable CO2 sources. However, recent small-scale CO2-EOR projects have been successful in Kentucky and some results of these projects will be reviewed.

This is an AAPG-sponsored workshop. Registration for this workshop is being handled through AAPG, see brochure.