Carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery in Australia – techno-economic evaluation, carbon dioxide source/sink networks and current policy landscape

This paper presents the results of a techno-economics analysis to quantify potential for storing CO2 and producing lower carbon intensity oil from mature, onshore Australian fields located in Cooper/Eromanga Surat/Bowen Basins. The work explores impact incentivisation, identifies possible sources support CO2-EOR (enhanced recovery) deployment, discusses global policy. hypothetical ‘carbon incentive’ assessed this study resulted unlocking an additional 40 million metric tons (Mt) storage 73 barrels (MMBO) domestic production compared base case scenario that most closely represent Australia’s current policy economic settings. Further, indicated that, with net-negative dioxide emissions could be achieved by deploying practices certain mature fields. found there are currently sufficient industrial CO2, particularly black coal-fired power generation hard-to-abate industries such as cement steel production, deployment. An opportunity explore co-development ‘stacked storage’ using both concurrent geologic adjacent, unconnected reservoirs is proposed. may significantly reduce development costs stand-alone projects, providing more favourable techno-economics, accelerating physical connection sinks.