A model of CO 2 - flood enhanced oil recovery with applications to oil price influence on CO 2 storage costs

Geological sequestration of CO2 through Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) presents an opportunity to achieve significant emissions reductions. However, there is considerable uncertainty over the amount of CO2 that can be stored over the economic life of an EOR project. This paper presents the development of a model that provides first-order cost estimates, sensitive to key site-specific or project-specific parameters, for CO2-EOR projects. The model is based on previous work in the literature on modeling of recovery in unstable miscible flooding processes, and shows good agreement with predictions by other types of models in the illustrative case shown here. Future development of the cost model will allow the most important parameters affecting the economics of CO2-EOR projects to be identified, and help CO2 producers and field operators to make more informed strategic decisions.