“Companies aren’t going to spend a lot of money on CO2 EOR with all this oil they can get by fracking,” says Verleger, founder of consulting firm PK Verleger LLC in Carbondale, Colo.
Three hundred fifty miles southwest of Roosevelt’s Dallas office, Legado Resources LLC has used carbon dioxide since 2008 to recharge existing wells and tap the residual oil below them.
On a cold, cloudless day in November, the company is one of three working the Goldsmith field, where cactuses are scattered among pumps, pipelines and drilling rigs. Operations superintendent Bobby Lord snaps his head around to what sounds like a rifle shot as compressed air bursts from another company’s pump. With the Permian booming, it’s hard to find good help, Lord says.
“If you’re serious about supporting your family, maybe it’s time to move here,” he says.
Goldsmith Field
Legado’s portion of the Goldsmith field has produced 74 million barrels since 1934, says Dane Cantwell, senior vice president for development. The company has 70 wells for injecting CO2 and 93 for extracting it along with water and oil.
Operators send the mix to a processing station that pumps oil to a pipeline, recycles CO2 back to the reservoir and injects water deep underground to protect upper-level aquifers. Almost all the CO2 remains underground or in the pipelines and processing stations, Cantwell says.
In June, Occidental told California regulators that 0.3% of the CO2 used at its enhanced-recovery field near Denver City, Texas, escaped during a 25-year period; the rest stayed trapped.
As many as 100 million additional barrels of oil may be recoverable from Legado’s portion of Goldsmith, Cantwell says. Permian oil producers, who now buy about 83,000 tons of CO2 each day, could use twice as much to develop all of their available reserves, he says.
Roosevelt is also on the hunt for CO2. He began studying the well that led to his biggest discovery, in 2007, when WTI crude neared $100 a barrel. He planned a second conventional well to double output but reconsidered when chief engineer Jimmy Hawkins suggested carbon dioxide. After studying Melzer’s CO2 research, Hawkins realized Roosevelt’s well sat atop a residual oil zone. Roosevelt was skeptical until outside consultants came back with bigger projections than Hawkins had forecast.