[ckilmer]

CO2 miscible flood in optimal conditions can recover additional oil comprising around 11% of the original oil in place.
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you understand that this statement is not out of variance with DeLillo statement that CO2 enhancement can deliver up to a 30 fold increase in well production.

Why?

Because “11% of the original oil IN PLACE.” is many orders of magnitude higher than commercially accessible oil. In the Baaken/Three Forks formation for example Continental has recently doubled their estimates of oil IN PLACE to over 900 billion barrels of which as much as 45 billion barrels is commercially accessible.

Now consider again your statement that “CO2 miscible flood in optimal conditions can recover additional oil comprising around 11% of the original oil IN PLACE.”

So you take 11% of 900 billion barrels and what is that? 95 billion barrels? suddenly you’re getting a number that looks like what DeLillo is talking about.

I could be completely wrong here. All I’m doing is following your logic.

Heck some of the biggest cheapest coal fields in the world are in north east wyoming. You could turn that coal into electricity and then use the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in the neighborhood.

[Smokin' Joe]

A lot depends on how the numbers are calculated, what is used as a baseline, etc. There is a lot of longer term data to be gathered on the Bakken/Three Forks, and there have been multiple significant upward revisions of the total amount of oil present, and the recoverable reserves as well. None of those revisions involve tertiary recovery methods that I am aware of and that could change the equqation as well. For now, recovery rates are sufficient that tertiary recovery is in the distant future, although I think it is being considered when the well plans are being drawn up.

Heck some of the biggest cheapest coal fields in the world are in north east wyoming. You could turn that coal into electricity and then use the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in the neighborhood.

Much of the Wyoming coal is shipped out on unit trains to be used to generate power. The other part of the equation for power generation is water supply.

The Great Plains Coal Gassification Project is one such, the CO2 is currently being pipelined to Canada for tertiary recovery efforts there. North Dakota has significant lignite reserves as well, and is an energy exporter.

Wyoming and Eastern Montana contain quite a bit of coal (and oilfields as well), so yes, the potential exists to recover CO2 and use it relatively locally for oil recovery enhancement.