Bo Ren
Scientist
Aramco Americas
Bo Ren is a research scientist at Aramco Americas, with over 10 years of experience in reservoir engineering, life-cycle assessment, and CCS. He has authored over 50 papers and actively contributes to the SPE as a committee member for conferences and award programs. Bo has received multiple honors from SPE, including Regional Sustainability and Stewardship Award, Regional Service Award, SPE A Peer Apart Award. Bo hold a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from UT-Austin.
Participates in
TECHNICAL PROGRAMME | Primary Energy Supply
New Exploration & Production Technologies to Extend Supply
Forum 03 | Technical Programme Hall 1
28
April
14:30
16:00
UTC+3
Most of CCS projects at oilfields are now through CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR). CO2-EOR has been widely used in the past 50 years in the US and elsewhere. The carbon storage incidental to EOR varies with field/reservoir characteristics with about half of injected CO2 retained in oil reservoirs on average. This incidental storage enables the produced oil to be low- or even negative- carbon from a life cycle perspective. The objective of this paper is to conduct a rigorous greenhouse gas assessment on these historical CO2-EOR projects to identify a suite of economic, operational, and geological factors that favor low-carbon oil production.
We revisited 140+ historical CO2-EOR projects and collected data for injection-production rates. We first conducted production history matching through type curve modeling to predict the long-term (>2 hydrocarbon pore volume) performance of both carbon storage and oil production. Then we employed a greenhouse gas emission modeling tool to quantify the carbon footprints associated with major steps of CCS-EOR (from capture, injection, storage, production, processing). The emission modelling was also coupled with an economic assessment model to understand how both economic and technical factors influence the duration of low-carbon oil production for these projects. We also varied operational parameters (e.g., water alternating gas injection ratio) and CO2 source types (natural and industrial CO2) to examine associated influence.
The collections have good coverage of flood types (miscible and immiscible), rock types (carbonate and sandstone), reservoir depth (1200-11950 ft), permeability ranges (0.1-2300 mD), oil viscosity (0.3-260 cp), and other field/reservoir characteristics. Based on the extensive assessment of these projects, we found that low-carbon oil production normally occurred at early period of CO2 injection with the low-carbon duration varying dramatically. This wide variability in duration exhibited a strong dependence on reservoir depth, permeability, gas-oil-ratios, and gas compositions. The duration can be extended through optimizing injection strategies, switching CO2 source types, and selecting surface CO2 separation processes. With the best combinations of these factors, the low-carbon production can be doubled in comparison to the base case.
Carbon storage in oil reservoirs is the most tangible option for CCUS. Through robust assessment on carbon performance of historical CO2-EOR projects with reliable reservoir datasets, we demonstrate that CCS-EOR has the potential to achieve low-carbon oil for certain production periods, which depends on careful engineering design, optimized processing practices, and the availability of robust carbon storage incentives.
Our findings imply that reservoir assets at a stranding risk due to intensive carbon emissions of traditional operations might be revitalized through CO2 injection for both EOR and carbon storage.
We revisited 140+ historical CO2-EOR projects and collected data for injection-production rates. We first conducted production history matching through type curve modeling to predict the long-term (>2 hydrocarbon pore volume) performance of both carbon storage and oil production. Then we employed a greenhouse gas emission modeling tool to quantify the carbon footprints associated with major steps of CCS-EOR (from capture, injection, storage, production, processing). The emission modelling was also coupled with an economic assessment model to understand how both economic and technical factors influence the duration of low-carbon oil production for these projects. We also varied operational parameters (e.g., water alternating gas injection ratio) and CO2 source types (natural and industrial CO2) to examine associated influence.
The collections have good coverage of flood types (miscible and immiscible), rock types (carbonate and sandstone), reservoir depth (1200-11950 ft), permeability ranges (0.1-2300 mD), oil viscosity (0.3-260 cp), and other field/reservoir characteristics. Based on the extensive assessment of these projects, we found that low-carbon oil production normally occurred at early period of CO2 injection with the low-carbon duration varying dramatically. This wide variability in duration exhibited a strong dependence on reservoir depth, permeability, gas-oil-ratios, and gas compositions. The duration can be extended through optimizing injection strategies, switching CO2 source types, and selecting surface CO2 separation processes. With the best combinations of these factors, the low-carbon production can be doubled in comparison to the base case.
Carbon storage in oil reservoirs is the most tangible option for CCUS. Through robust assessment on carbon performance of historical CO2-EOR projects with reliable reservoir datasets, we demonstrate that CCS-EOR has the potential to achieve low-carbon oil for certain production periods, which depends on careful engineering design, optimized processing practices, and the availability of robust carbon storage incentives.
Our findings imply that reservoir assets at a stranding risk due to intensive carbon emissions of traditional operations might be revitalized through CO2 injection for both EOR and carbon storage.
