University of Kansas
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A proposal was submitted in late July to the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC) Applied Research Matching Fund (ARMF) to acquire funding to assist in verifying the technical and economic viability of the application of CO2 miscible flooding to central Kansas oilfields. Notification was received in late September that KTEC awarded $100,000 to support this effort and the contract is currently in the process of being finalized. KTEC makes competitive awards for innovative research and development (R&D) projects with high potential for commercial development in Kansas. In exchange for this risk funding, KTEC receives a fee from product sales on commercially successful projects. Projects must demonstrate commercial opportunity, innovative technology development, and sound management. Over the last century, Kansas has produced over 6 billion barrels of oil. However, current production is only 1/3 of the producing rates in the 1950’s. Unless new technology is introduced, many of the 6000 fields in Kansas will be abandoned with substantial remaining oil left in place. The injection of CO2 to displace oil is a proven recovery process in Permian Basin reservoirs in West Texas. CO2 injected into a reservoir at sufficient pressure (above a pressure termed the minimum miscibility pressure) acts as a solvent that "picks up", or mobilizes, oil that has been trapped or left behind in a waterflood. CO2 miscible flooding is the only oil recovery process that has potential of recovering additional oil from reservoirs in Kansas that have been waterflooded either naturally or by planned development. The economic potential of CO2 miscible flooding for reinvigorating the petroleum industry in Kansas is enormous with possible additional estimated recovery of 250 million to one billion barrels of oil, equivalent to 6 to 25 years of additional Kansas production at current rates. Although the potential for CO2 miscible flooding is great, technical questions concerning potential recovery and economics must be answered and the process proven to work on Kansas reservoirs before Kansas operators would be willing to invest in this technology, and before any company would be willing to invest in a pipeline to bring CO2 to the State. If CO2 flooding can be demonstrated to be technically and economically feasible in Kansas reservoirs, Shell CO2 Company, Ltd., a participant in this proposal, will work to establish a CO2 transportation pipeline and supply the demand for CO2 that would result. The overall objective of the research and development program is to verify the technical and economic viability of the application of CO2 miscible flooding to central Kansas oilfields. There are five phases of work planned which are I) conduct a feasibility study of the Arbuckle and Lansing Kansas City reservoirs of central Kansas, II) select a site and design one or more field pilot CO2 miscible floods, III) construct and operate the CO2 pilot(s), IV) evaluate the technical and economic performance of the pilot(s) and V) implement a program to build a CO2 pipeline into Kansas if the results of the first four phases of work are positive. This proposal is for support of Phase I, i.e., to conduct the feasibility study for CO2 miscible flooding of the Arbuckle and Lansing Kansas City field of central Kansas. This is a critical first step in the overall program to implement CO2 miscible flooding of oilfields in Kansas. The team assembled for this project contains organizations with extensive backgrounds in petroleum geology, petroleum engineering, and energy research and development: Shell CO2 Company, Ltd., a limited partnership, was formed in early 1998 when Shell Western E&P Inc. and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners combined their CO2 assets. It is the world’s largest supplier of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery with sales and operations in five states. Shell CO2 markets carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery and has annual sales of $65 million. Shell has designed and operated a significant number of the world’s CO2 floods, in many cases recovering an additional 10 to 15% of the original oil in place. Shell brings the latest technology in evaluating the potential for CO2 flooding. They supply technical direction and support including detailed numerical simula-tion work, geologic, petrophysical and engineer-ing analysis. Shell operates large-scale CO2 supply and trans-portation systems that are capable of delivering approximately one billion cubic feet (BCF) of CO2 per day to both large integrated majors and small in-dependents. Shell CO2 is working closely with Kansas operators through informal consortia, the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association (KIOGA) and university researchers at the University of Kansas Energy Research Center (KUERC). The University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc. (CRINC) is a non-profit corporation affiliated with the University which contracts for all research conducted at the University of Kansas. Kansas University Energy Research Center (KUERC) coordinates and facilitates integrated energy research at KU. The primary goal is to develop enhanced energy research programs serving state, regional, and national energy needs. The Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) conducts energy research on a wide range of technical topics (e.g., reservoir characterization, depositional sequence architecture, world wide web-based information transfer, petrophysics) aimed at providing information that can be used to search for additional resources, recover existing resources more effectively, or extend the life of known oil and gas fields. The Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP) evaluates the potential of oil recovery processes which are applicable in the State, and provides technical assistance on field tests in the technology of tertiary oil recovery and efficient reservoir management. Joint projects involving KGS and TORP are administered through CRINC and KUERC. |
Electronic version placed online October 1998
URL=http://www.kgs.ukans.edu/ERC/PTTC/97News/q98-3-1.html