EOR & Agriculture

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Agricultural industries and communities can benefit from selling CO2 to meet the growing demand for CO2 to boost domestic oil production.

The agriculture sector can supply high purity, manmade CO2 to access domestic oil resources in existing oil fields. Agriculture industry opportunities for capturing CO2 to spur EOR expansion include:

  • Ethanol production: The capture of biogenic emissions from ethanol production is technologically straightforward given the  pure stream of CO2 produced in the fermentation process. Many ethanol plants sell CO2O2 to the food and beverage industry, but CO2-EOR represents a much larger market.
  • Domestic fertilizer production: CO2 capture from fertilizer production is fully commercial and relies on the same proven technology platform used in compressing and dehydrating natural gas.
  • Gasification of biomass with fossil fuels: CO2 capture from gasification of biomass, by itself or with fossil feedstocks for production of electricity and liquid fuels, holds promise for increasing both domestic energy production and reducing carbon emissions.

Agricultural industries present an important, early opportunity to provide CO2 for EOR
because of the relatively low cost of capturing CO2 from these types of facilities

Build-out of pipeline infrastructure is required to support expansion of CO2-EOR.
CO2 pipelines have operated in the US for decades and there are currently over 3,900 miles of CO2 pipelines. Additional infrastructure is required to expand domestic oil production by gathering CO2 from sources such as ethanol and fertilizer facilities and transporting the CO2 to EOR operations by pipeline.

Integrating CO2-EOR with agricultural industries provides an opportunity for lowering the carbon intensity of agricultural products.
The environmental benefits of CO2-EOR provides agricultural industries a commercially proven option for complying with emerging and expected state, regional and international lowcarbon fuels policies. For example, capturing CO2 from ethanol plants and permanently storing it in EOR formations significantly lowers the carbon intensity of the ethanol plant operation, and potentially commands higher prices in states with Low Carbon Fuel Standards and other policies that create incentives for lower carbon intensity fuels.

Agricultural industries are working to advance and integrate technologies that can contribute to expanding CO2-EOR.
For example, ADM’s Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ICCS) Project will be a commercial-scale example of a CO2 capture and storage project at an ethanol facility and builds on ADM’s experience with a smaller-scale project. ADM will capture one million tons of CO2 per year at their ethanol production plant using dehydration and compression for transport, injection and geologic storage in the Mt. Simon Sandstone Formation. The ICCS project is carried out in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Another example is Chaparral Energy, which has CO2-EOR projects in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Since 1982, the Chaparral and Merit Enid Fertilizer Project has captured and transported CO2 from an ammonia nitrogen fertilizer plant in Enid, Oklahoma to EOR fields in southern Oklahoma. Every year, about 600,000 tons of CO2 are captured and injected, demonstrating the longevity of manmade CO2-EOR projects. Looking ahead to 2013, Chaparral will begin capturing about 850,000 tons of CO2 per year from an ammonia nitrogen fertilizer plant in Coffeyville, Kansas, and will transport the CO2 via pipeline approximately 70 miles to an EOR field for CO2-EOR recovery and simultaneous carbon storage. This project will be the largest CO2 capture and injection operation in N. America involving CO2 emissions from a fertilizer facility.