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Key Project Tasks |
To carry out on-going commercial EOR operations using CO2 piped from Dakota Gasification
To develop and use new reservoir mapping and predictive tools to increase understanding of CO2 behaviour in such underground formations including the way it is transported through reservoir rocks, reservoir storage capacity, and length of time the CO2 could remained trapped
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Project Summary |
The Weyburn Oil field is operated by EnCana Energy and lies on the north-western rim of the Williston Basin. It is 16km south east of Weyburn in southern Saskatchewan. Operations of the oil field began in 1954 and currently there are some 650 production and water injection wells in operation. The average daily crude oil production is 2900 m3/d (c. 18200 bbl/d). The Weyburn field produces about 10% of EnCana's total oil production. Over its lifetime the field has produced some 55 million m3 of oil from primary and water flood production. The field is currently in production decline having produced in excess of 25% of the estimated recoverable oil reserves.
EnCana announced in 1997 that it would develop an EOR project to extend the life of the Weyburn field by more than 25 years. The project involves a CO2 miscible flood, which is anticipated to extract an additional 122 million barrels or more of oil from the field. The CO2 for the project is coming from the Great Plains Synfuels plant in Beulah, North Dakota, operated by the Dakota Gasification Co. A 325 km pipeline has been constructed by the Dakota Gasification Company. The pipeline will supply 2.7 million m3/d of CO2 to the Weyburn field. In addition, CO2 injection and recycle equipment has been installed at the Weyburn oilfield.
There are a number of key features of this CO2-EOR project:
• It involves the cross border transfer of CO2 from the USA to Canada and so is, essentially, the first time there has been international trading of "physical" CO2 for the purposes of emissions reduction.
• The CO2 for the flood comes from fossil fuel use. Of the 74 CO2-EOR projects in the USA only 4 sites use anthropogenic CO2 (from gas processing and fertiliser plants). Their total use accounts for some 13 million m3/day. The Weyburn project represents a significant increase in the use of anthropogenic CO2 for oil production. With the establishment of the CO2 gas pipeline infrastructure this will lead to an increased use of anthropogenic CO2 in EOR projects.
The Weyburn Monitoring Project complements SACS, which is monitoring CO2 storage in a deep saline aquifer, investigating performance in a carbonate reservoir as part of a CO2-EOR scheme. By undertaking such monitoring projects and by demonstrating that the injected CO2 can be stored effectively for geological timescales, confidence will be enhanced in geological storage as a mitigation option.
Thus, this project forms an on-going enhanced oil recovery project located at the Weyburn field in Canada. The objective of the project is to use new reservoir mapping and predictive tool to develop a better understanding of the behaviour of CO2 in a geologic formation, including the way that it moves through reservoir rocks, the quantity that can be stored in a reservoir, and how long the CO2 could be expected to remain trapped in the underground formation.
The Weyburn Sequestration Project is part of the Weyburn CO2 Monitoring Project (more recently known as the First Phase of the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project). The Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project is the world’s first CO2 measuring, monitoring and verification initiative. It was launched in 2000, and is a US $80 million international project. Further information on the first phase of the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project can be found at Weyburn CO2 Monitoring Project , and information on the final phase of this same project can be found at Weyburn II CO2 Storage Project .
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