Does this produce carbon credits, or just more oil...?

 

I am a big fan of carbon offsetting. I've written about it here and here, and I think David Roberts of Gristmill has a point when he says in Fast Company that buying carbon offsets should not be considered a cop-out. However, I have to draw the line somewhere, which is why I can't stomach claiming carbon credits from Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

Enhanced Oil Recovery is a relatively new method of retrieving underground deposits of oil. Typically, when we drill for oil, we have two methods. First we use Primary recovery, which is straightforward; we drill into the ground and the pressure of the reservoir, along with the pumps that you can sometimes see alongside the highway, pushes the oil up above the ground. However, according to the U.S. DOE, this only brings up about 10% of a typical reservoir, so we include secondary recovery, where we pump in gas or water, displacing the oil into the higher pressure well bores that force it upward. This method gets us 20%-40% of the original reserve. Now, however, some drilling companies are considering a third option that may be able to obtain 30%-60%, or even more. Called tertiary recovery, or Enhanced Oil Recovery, the most popular method of gaining access to these additional reserves involves pumping Carbon Dioxide into the reservoir to create additional pressure and push even more oil into the production well bore. The carbon dioxide then remains in the ground and the process has the additional benefit of being a form of carbon sequestration.

So far this sounds great. We are reducing our dependence on foreign oil by increasing our ability to tap our domestic reserves. At the same time, we're sequestering carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere and contributed to climate change. On the whole, the concept is a good one.

However, I have a major problem with companies claiming that EOR should result in the creation of carbon credits. BlueSource LLC, one of the biggest U.S. carbon credit providers, is offering carbon credits from two Enhanced Oil Recovery projects, one in Wyoming and the other in Texas. Here is one of their blurbs:

In Wyoming, an American company is capturing waste CO2 and injecting it into old oil fields to produce oil, "made in America", that would not otherwise be produced. In a small but meaningful way, this helps secure the future of our country by expanding our domestic oil reserves, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases. The waste CO2 is captured in the ground after pushing out the oil. – natsource.com

Let's examine the logic here: a company takes waste carbon dioxide and pumps it underground to obtain oil. That carbon dioxide would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere, but that oil would otherwise not have been retrieved. So should we really consider the project a carbon reduction? Joe Romm at Climate Progress brought this issue up in August 2007 and claimed that "The key ratio is CO2 injected vs. CO2 released from recovered oil." In other words, does the CO2 sequestered underground exceed the CO2 emitted from combustion of the oil recovered? Romm cites a BP/UCLA study that suggests the net emissions are, at best, zero. So the best we can hope from EOR is that it negates the emissions associated with the oil it produces. But when I buy a carbon credit, I expect it to reduce the amount of global carbon emissions, not support a procedure that may or may not keep carbon emissions the same.

There have been some pretty good arguments that EOR ultimately does reduce carbon emissions (in particular, see the response from Bill Townsend, co-founder of Blue Source, to the Climate Progress article), but I don't think any of them are convincing. These arguments tend to run along three lines. First, some EOR projects use carbon dioxide from sources that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere (vent-stacked sources), instead of using carbon dioxide from natural, underground deposits that otherwise would have remained underground. Therefore, the argument goes, they are choosing a CO2 source that ultimately reduces overall emissions. To me, this is like claiming that a power plant would have been built anyway, so using natural gas (which produces less emissions, albeit still a significant amount) instead of coal should create carbon credits. Not a legitimate argument. Second, some say that EOR doesn't enable additional oil recovery, but "cleans" oil recovery that would have happened anyway. However, as Romm points out, U.S. DOE has suggested that EOR has the potential to increase our domestic oil recovery by 160 billion barrels. So, again, not an argument that convinces me to buy EOR carbon credits. Finally, some say that EOR could prove a necessary start for significantly increased carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in other forms. But this is a weak claim; we're a long way away from creating a true market carbon for carbon capture, and using oil recovery to attempt to jumpstart it now is almost oxymoronic.

If EOR recovered oil that replaced the production of oil somewhere else, the situation might be different. However, as it stands, EOR is a method of enabling additional oil recovery that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Let's compare this to renewable energy, for example. Wind-powered electricity production serves as a replacement for traditional, fossil-fuel based electricity and should be eligible for carbon credits under the right conditions. But imagine using a wind turbine to directly power a coal plant that otherwise couldn't have continued operation. No one with any reservations about the quality of carbon offsets would allow this to be eligible, so why should EOR be any different?

In the long run, I want my carbon offsets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not enable us to retrieve and burn more fossil fuels. If we're going to attempt tertiary oil recovery, carbon dioxide injection is a great idea. But no one should ever claim that Enhanced Oil Recovery produces carbon credits.