Basin oriented strategies for CO2 enhanced oil recovery: Rocky Mountain Region

The Rocky Mountain oil and gas producing region of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming has an original oil endowment of nearly 34 billion barrels. Of this, 11 billion barrels (33%) has been produced or proven. As such, nearly 23 billion barrels of oil will be left in the ground, or "stranded", following the use of traditional oil recovery practices. A major portion of this "stranded oil" is in reservoirs technically and economically amenable to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using carbon dioxide (CO2) injection. To date, tertiary recovery projects carried out in 5 fields in the Rocky Mountain region have recovered or proven about 200 MMbbls of this stranded oil. This report evaluates the future CO2-EOR oil recovery potential from the large oil fields of the Rocky Mountain region, highlighting the barriers that stand in the way of achieving this potential. The report then discusses how a concerted set of "basin oriented strategies" could help the Rocky Mountain region's oil production industry overcome these barriers helping increase domestic oil production.