By Shannon Osaka | October 25, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EDT | The Washington Post
The government is still funding the controversial practice of “enhanced oil recovery"
Every year, companies around the United States capture around 18 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from natural gas processing plants, oil refineries and power plants. As long as that CO2 — equivalent to around 4 million cars on the road for a year — is buried somewhere deep underground, it can’t contribute to global warming.
That’s the theory, anyway. But today, the lion’s share of the CO2 captured from industrial processes doesn’t go back into the ground. Instead, 60 percent of it is used to extract more oil, in a controversial process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”
“I think it’s a huge problem,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director of the advocacy group Oil Change International. “The oil and gas industry has done a very good job of co-opting our climate and clean energy policy.”
For over a decade, the U.S. government has been quietly funding the capture of CO2 that is ultimately used to drill more oil. Some experts and researchers argue that the climate impact is net positive: The oil will be drilled anyway, and the process can help companies learn how to capture CO2 more efficiently. But others say that the government shouldn’t be helping companies sustain more fossil fuel extraction.
The debate gets at one of the key questions for a country trying to shift away from fossil fuels — when is it still acceptable to financially support the production of oil and gas?
Climate and energy experts have said for years that the world will need some amount of carbon capture to zero out carbon emissions. The International Energy Agency estimates that the world will need to be able to capture 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050; today, the world’s total carbon capture amounts to just 4 percent of that goal.
But for a long time, there wasn’t a way for companies to make much money off burying carbon dioxide underground. The United States did offer a tax credit for CO2 stored permanently, but it was only around $20 per metric ton. Experts say it didn’t give companies enough of an incentive to take on the costs of burying CO2 deep underground in places like saline aquifers — areas of porous rock filled with salty water.
So, many oil and gas companies used the CO2 that they captured for a process that already existed: enhanced oil recovery. Oil is removed from a well in three stages: First, natural pressure can push oil toward the surface. Then, drillers inject a fluid, usually water, to produce more. In the final stage, CO2 can be injected into the well, where it mixes with the oil, expands and propels the oil toward the surface. This final stage, enhanced oil recovery, accounts for around 4 percent of U.S. oil production. It’s popular in the Permian Basin — a major oil field that covers West Texas and Southeast New Mexico.
Most of the CO2 that companies now use for enhanced oil recovery comes from geologic sources, where they dig it up before injecting it into their wells. Some experts point to this to argue that enhanced oil recovery would happen anyway, regardless of whether captured CO2 is available. (Visit The Washington Post for the full article)
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