Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) refers to the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. EOR can extract significant additional amounts of a reservoir's oil, over and above that recovered by using primary and secondary recovery.
A mixture of CO2 and water is pumped into the reservoir for this additional oil recovery. The CO2 pumped in stays in the reservoir, thus effectively getting sequestered. EOR thus provides the benefit of sequestering CO2 while at the same time providing additional amounts of oil (while one might feel that production of oil which is a fossil cannot be considered an environmental benefit, one should also consider that had it not been for EOR, the same amount of oil would have been pumped out from some other reservoir but without any sequestration).
While EOR for onshore oil field is a fairly well known domain, there have been recent researches and efforts for using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery from offshore oil wells too.
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Innovation sector01-07-2010
Source: ENI
01-12-2017
Source: Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum
01-09-2019
Source: University of Aberdeen
Pollution control
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Chemicals
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