Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
3/14/2014
JACKSON, Miss.—Former Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Chuck McConnell made an impassioned case for enhanced oil recovery as the primary economic driver for the capture of carbon dioxide in a speech here last week, pushing back against what he called the “myth” that EOR is a niche opportunity. Speaking at the Symposium on the Global Implications of Enhanced Oil Recovery, convened by Rice University and Mississippi State University, McConnell emphasized that CO2 should not simply be viewed as a waste in need of disposal. “We’re not in a situation where we look at this waste product,” said McConnell, now Executive Director of Rice’s Energy and Environment Initiative. “We have to look at it as a product worth having. It’s something that will transform our ability be more economically advanced, and we need that researched. We need the continued advancement of capturing CO2, the anthropogenic CO2 in these facilities and making it available.”
He added that, “By 2020, we should be able to bring CO2 into these fields with prices that are very typical in market today. By 2030, to transform the technologies in place to be able to realize this broadly across the country, from power plants, from chemical facilities across the country. It’s the imagination that technology roadmap is going to change the game. And why is that exciting right now? It’s because we see what will happen from it. We’re not looking at that as a relevant technology so that we can put in the ground or remove it from the atmosphere. We’re looking at it as a product that’s going to unlock the market place, create economic value and jobs and do other things.”
‘There are Broad Basins Throughout the Country’
McConnell specifically took aim at the idea that using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery is a “niche” opportunity that doesn’t have broad implications across the U.S. or the world. “That’s largely a myth. … People are just seeing the potential for it, and how impactful that’s going to be on us, and how to be able to weave the CO2 equation into that. It’s not just niches. There are broad basins throughout the country.”
He also emphasized that EOR can’t be viewed as a niche the helps CCS get started so the technology can be more meaningful down the road. Rather, he said, EOR needs to be the market driver to make CCS a reality and to effectively use the fossil fuel resources that exist in the United States. “I don’t think anybody in this room believes that fossil fuels are the destination of fuel in the next 700 years in this world,” he said. “I would imagine among all kinds of things, we’re not even thinking about it today in terms of what’s going to happen, what science is going to do, where the science is going to be based. But I do know one thing, so the next step will be in 100 years we have a choice on how we’re going to use our fossil fuels. That’s really the only question.”
McConnell added: “We’re going to need to do the all of the other things, the all of the above strategy. It’s all important. But we’re going to have to spend the time, effort and energy and have the market in place to produce CCUS or we’re never ever going to be able to realize meaningful CO2 storage or be able to realize meaningful discoveries of our domestic oil in this country.”
