Adnoc to boost oil output by injecting CO2 into reservoirs

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is on track to start injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into some reservoirs in 2016 as part of plans to boost oil production and replace the use of hydrogen gas in the fields.

Adnoc has set up a joint venture with the green energy firm Masdar for carbon capture, usage and storage projects, which will utilise CO2 emitted from the country’s largest steelmaker, Emirates Steel. Masdar and Adnoc will announce this year the price formula for the CO2.

“We have our set price agreement, but it is not yet public to be announced,” said Arafat Al Yafei, the manager of the CO2 and Nitrogen development department.

The emirate of Abu Dhabi, which holds more than 90 per cent of the country’s oil reserves, is one of the first in the Arabian Gulf to work on such a project for use in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) for difficult reservoirs in oilfields.

As many as 100 carbon capture projects are needed by 2020 and 3,000 by 2050 to slow the speed of global warming, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Globally, many such projects have failed because they proved not to be commercially viable and because of concerns about the risk of storing carbon dioxide underground.

The joint venture between Adnoc and Masdar has a budget of Dh450 million and in July it awarded Dodsal Group an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build facilities for the project. From the Emirates Steel plant in Mussafah, 800,000 tonnes a year of CO2 will be piped 50 kilometres to the Rumaitha field, one of the smaller fields in Abu Dhabi’s main onshore concession, and later to Bab, its largest onshore oilfield. In 2009, Adnoc injected 60 tonnes a day of CO2 in a two-year pilot project at Rumaitha to get information about reservoir behaviour.

But the EOR project has the potential to grow further.

“We have many demand locations within Abu Dhabi reservoirs. Rumaitha and Bab is the starting [point]. So potentially it will grow with time and it will add value to the oil and gas industry in Abu Dhabi,’’ said Mr Al Yafei.

“We are preparing ourselves for the future. We want to be proactive in that approach. We don’t want to be shocked with the demand or need to inject EOR while we are not ready.”

The project will help increase production from the fields, as part of Abu Dhabi’s plans to boost oil production capacity to 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2017 from less than 3 million bpd today.

“For the time we are trying to prove the concept, once we start in 2016 the actual operation we will know exactly how much additional oil will come from this project,” said Mr Al Yafei.

Abu Dhabi needs more gas and would like to replace the use of gas in oilfields with carbon doixide to free it up for other usage. The emirate also has one of the world’s highest carbon footprints and would like to reduce its emissions.