Identification of early opportunities for CO2 sequestration—worldwide screening for CO2-EOR and CO2-ECBM projects

A study has been performed to identify potential worldwide opportunities for early application of CO2 sequestration. An early opportunity is defined as a high-purity CO2 point source, which can provide CO2 at low costs to oil or coal fields, where the CO2 is sequestered, and simultaneously enhance oil production (CO2-EOR) or coal bed methane production (CO2-ECBM). A Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to combine worldwide CO2 point sources and oil and coal fields. This resulted in 429 potential source–oil field and 79 source–coal field combinations. A multi-criteria analysis (MCA), in which technical and socio-economic criteria are taken into account, was applied to rank the source–reservoir combinations generated by the GIS exercise. Some of the most promising cases were considered in more detail to select four illustrative cases for further study: two potential enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects and two potential enhanced coal bed methane recovery (ECBM) projects. Case 1 consists of a hydrogen plant in Saudi Arabia, which could sequester 0.26 Mt/year CO2 in a depleted oil reservoir at a net saving of approximately 3 €/t CO2. EOR case 2 is a hydrogen plant in California, USA, which has to be retrofitted in order to generate a pure CO2 stream. Approximately 0.28 Mt CO2 could be stored annually. Mitigation costs have been estimated at 9–19 €/t CO2, depending on the availability of steam for CO2 regeneration. In cases 3 and 4, circa 0.68 and 0.29 Mt CO2 from ammonia plants in China and Canada could be sequestered annually in coal fields for ECBM production at approximately 5 and 6 €/t CO2, respectively.