Is this the first time a large scale version of this process has been tried?
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This is another question I don’t know the answer to.
As Thackney said, it's been proven and its not new. In the past decade in Hobbs, NM OxyPermian has been converting waterflood injection wells to CO2 injection for tertiary recovery of crude. They have converted the water pipelines to carry CO2 to the well heads.