The Oil Drum

The 7:30 report on the ABC had a segment yesterday on the impact of the Garnaut report on two Cooper basin projects - GeoDynamics' HFR geothermal power experiment (covered before in Geothermia) and Santos' proposal to use carbon dioxide injection into Cooper Basin oil and gas fields to enhance recovery rates - the Moomba Carbon Storage project (pdf).

GeoDynamics have also been in the news (The Australian) as it conducted flow tests over the weekend to determine if there is any pressure loss between the Habanero 1 and Habaenro 3 wells. The results are to be announced later this week. The company has also commenced drilling another test well, 9km from Habanero, to test the extent of hot granite rocks within the company's operating permits.

Well they sure are hospitable folks down here, they laid on Seattle weather here today for their Dean, who hails from those parts. Unfortunately Bill Mitchell, the first speaker in the session on Sustainable Development Communities was taken ill and could not make the meeting, so that the following two speakers were given extra time to fill in the gap. (I will forego the UCSB PR that was the intro to the day – but will cover a bit at the end, since it paid for my trip).

The responses to the evolving crisis in Energy Supply will have to be addressed in several ways, and the first session of the morning looked at the development of sustainable communities, in particular focusing on Chula Vista and the work of the National Energy Center for Sustainable Communities, itself part of the Global Energy Center and an affiliation of universities in addressing the issues of urban sustainability given

In the United States, for example, 80% of the population lives in cities. Their buildings, transportation and urban infrastructure account for 80% of U.S. energy consumption, and 70% of that amount is determined by how and where Americans design their neighborhoods. Low-density development in the U.S. consumes 85% more energy, 70 times more water, 50 times more lumber and 40 times more land than higher-density development of the same square footage.

This being CA and the times being what they are, it was also stressed that urban areas are responsible for 75% of the GHG emissions. This was one of Doug Newman’s opening comments as he talked about the goals that the Center and the Department of Energy have in setting up this effort to build what hopefully will become an international model of a sustainable community. It is important at the community level when one considers that power outages, which impact communities, cost $119 billion a year, and that energy costs are second only to labor in community expenses.
UPDATE Byron Washom's remarks have been corrected - my apologies for the error.

One of the benefits of flying around the country for a couple of weeks has been the chance to finish the odd book, and given the current subjects of the site, it is time to toss one of them into the fray.  Mark Jaccard has recently written "Sustainable Fossil Fuels, the Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy." To give you a taste of his credentials, apart from being a Professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver,

Dr. Jaccard is responsible for the Canadian Industrial Energy Efficiency Data and Analysis Centre, funded by the Canadian government and other agencies. The centre is directed by Dr. John Nyboer, University Research Associate, who collaborates in research, supervision and advisory work. Dr. Jaccard has chaired the B.C. Utilities Commission (92-97), served on the IPCC (93-96), and served on the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (96-2003).

I had therefore been looking forward to reading his book since it was first publicized (it came out at the end of December).  It was, unfortunately, a bit harder to read and follow than I had hoped (despite the fact that it comes with it's own student's abbreviated version at the back).  

Tip of the hat to Engineer Poet for introducing me to this interesting and important story.

Recently, a little publicized meeting called the EOR Carbon Management Workshop, was held at the Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas.

Michael Moore, director of the workshop, noted that the developing technology of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, sequestering them geologically or utilizing those emissions in enhanced oil recovery has received government approval.

Holding up a recent announcement from U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman about the successful sequestration of 5 million tons of CO2 into the Weyburn field in Saskatchewan, Canada, he declared, "the government says it works!"

The Weyburn Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, captured CO2 from a coal gasification project in North Dakota and transported it over 200 miles to the Weyburn field for sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. The DOE estimated the field's oil recovery rate was doubled and, if the methodology was applied worldwide, would eliminate a third to a half of CO2 emissions over the next 100 years while helping recover billions more barrels of crude oil.

In this post, we'll examine the claims about Weyburn's success to cover two important related subjects.

1. CO2 injection for EOR (enhanced oil recovery)
2. CO2 sequestration as a solution to climate change

What did Weyburn actually demonstrate? What is the longer term meaning of the Weyburn project? Let's take a look.