Comparison of Non-EOR and EOR Life Cycle Assessments

Technical Report · Sat Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1874451· OSTI ID:1874451

Jensen, Melanie D. ^[1]; Schlasner, Steven M. ^[2]; Hamling, John A. ^[2]; Leroux, Kerryanne M. ^[2]; Gorecki, Charles D. ^[2]; Azzolina, Nicholas A. ^[3]

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1. Univ. of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND (United States). Energy and Environmental Research Center; Univ. of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND (United States). Energy & Environmental Research Center
2. Univ. of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND (United States). Energy and Environmental Research Center
3. The CETER Group, Inc., Green Bay, WI (United States)

The Energy & Environmental Research Center worked with The CETER Group, Inc., through the Plains CO₂ Reduction Partnership to evaluate whether life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with incremental oil produced by enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) are less than GHG emissions associated with conventional oil production. A cradle-to-grave approach was used to quantify the full life cycle GHG emissions for four scenarios: conventional natural gas production and conventional oil production (i.e., the current conventional approach), natural gas processing with CO₂ capture coupled with typical West Texas EOR, natural gas processing at Shute Creek plant and conventional oil production, and natural gas processing at Shute Creek plant with CO₂ capture coupled with EOR at the Bell Creek oil field. Two tools were used to conduct the life cycle analysis (LCA), including 1) a customized programming of the Argonne National Laboratory Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation model, known as the GREET model, and 2) Microsoft Excel ® spreadsheet models using emission factors from peer-reviewed literature and U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory publications. The modeling results show that the scenarios with CO₂ capture and CO₂ EOR produce both natural gas and oil with lower life cycle emissions than conventional systems producing natural gas and oil independently. These results are supported using both different modeling approaches and sets of modeling inputs. While considerable effort was put into acquiring necessary detail for accurate models, much of the data used were obtained from secondary sources. Significantly greater detail and more rigorous treatment would be required to produce an LCA for use as proof of CO₂ emission reduction.

• Research Organization: Univ. of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND (United States). Energy & Environmental Research Center
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
• DOE Contract Number: FC26-05NT42592
• OSTI ID: 1874451
• Report Number(s): DOE-EERC-42592-21; 2019-EERC-10-07
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
58 GEOSCIENCES
PCOR
Plains Carbon Dioxide Reduction Partnership
Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership
carbon capture and storage
geologic CO2 storage