Enhanced Oil Recovery Potential and CO₂ Sequestration in the Michigan and Northern Appalachian Basins Region

Lawrence H. Wickstrom¹, Ronald A. Riley¹, John A. Harper², David A. Barnes³, Katharine Lee Avary⁴, Brandon C. Nuttall⁵, and Richard E. Nyahay^6
1Ohio Geological Survey, Columbus, OH
²Pennsylvania Geological Survey, Pittsburgh, PA
³Department of Geosciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
⁴West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, Morgantown, WV
⁵Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
⁶New York State Museum, Albany, NY

The U.S. DOE-funded Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) is currently involved in an examination of potential carbon dioxide (CO₂) sequestration reservoirs, including oil and gas fields, for eight states. The Appalachian and Michigan Basins contain some of the largest historic oil-and-gas-producing areas in the conterminous United States. This region has produced over 5 billion barrels of oil and more than 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas; however, secondary and especially tertiary recovery attempts have been spotty at best within the two basins.

Since 1972, more than 1 billion barrels of incremental oil have been produced using CO₂-assisted enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques in the Permian Basin and other areas of the western United States. Large sources of CO₂ for EOR have not been available within the eastern United States to enable this technology. Should CO2 become available via capture from large anthropogenic sources, could this region take advantage of this technology to produce hundreds of millions of barrels of additional oil while sequestering CO₂?

Past EOR projects in the region and select case histories have been summarized. Using this information and a new regional oil and gas fields GIS, a high-level screening for potential CO₂-EOR candidates is underway.

Presented AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2008 © AAPG Eastern Section