In testimony before the House subcommittee on Energy & Resources in June, 2004, Vello A. Kuuskraa, president of Advanced Resources International (ARI), presented a graphic to members of congress showing huge potentially recoverable domestic reserves of stranded oil. This oil would be recovered by use of CO2 EOR (enhanced oil recovery). Here's an updated version of that graphic—from Undeveloped US oil resources: A big target for enhanced oil recovery — published in World Oil, August, 2006.

Figure 1

However, the problem of declining domestic oil production is not due to a lack of resources. We still have nearly 400 billion barrels of oil that is being left behind, "stranded". This is because our primary and secondary recovery methods recover only about one-third of the original oil in-place from our domestic oil fields, [Figure 1 above].

Numerous approaches are being tried to recover a portion of this "stranded" oil. The one with the highest, but still unrealized, potential is using CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). Twenty years ago, enthusiasm for this idea was high.

Let's talk about what's going on here, considering the impact it will have on future U.S. domestic oil production and energy independence.