When you read this headline, I am guessing you said "really?" or "Pike's been smoking those left-handed cigarettes again." But that is not the case. Ask Denbury CEO Gareth Roberts. He might show you an illustration of a volcano that erupted on the U.S. Gulf Coast some 65 million years ago and deposited lava around current-day Jackson, Mississippi. Denbury owns part of that mass of lava. Why, you ask. Because Denbury has made its mark in CO2 EOR and the lava, over 15,000 feet below the surface, is the source of the CO2 for the floods that have turned Denbury into the leading tertiary-recovery oil company in the Southern U.S. The extinct volcano, by the way, is the largest single source of CO2 in the Eastern U.S. However, Denbury needs increasing amounts of CO2 in locations other than Mississippi and the company is working its way through other sources for the gas, primarily from refinery waste gas, in order to redevelop fields on the Texas Gulf Coast. Denbury's need for CO2 to support EOR is not unique. In West Texas, where CO2 flooding has been occurring for more than 37 years, operators are experiencing a short fall of about half a billion cubic feet per day. During the 37 years, operators have safely transported over 600 million metric tons of CO2 and have safely injected over 1,200 million tons (22 trillion standard feet), according to Ian Duncan of the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, in a report to the U.S. Congress. The industry operates over 13,000 CO2 injection wells, 3,500 miles of high-pressure CO2 pipelines, and produces about 245,000 bopd with CO2 flooding. Interesting, isn't it, that in a era where sequestration of carbon is THE topic and schemes to sequester it are climbing out of the walls, there is one industry that can't get enough of the stuff. Our message to the rest of the world - bring it on. And that is exactly the message CO2 EOR gurus are sending to national, state and local governments.
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