1. Some Thoughts About 45Q Professor Sally M. Benson
Department of Energy Resources Engineering
Stanford, CA
Hi everyone,
My name is EJ and I am a graduate student here at ERE working with Sally. Today I will be talking about a project that we in collaboration with some other people in university conducted on the near-term potential for carbon negative bioenergy in the U.S.
CMI Meeting
April, 2018

2. Action on CCUS is Needed Now to Regain Confidence and Prepare for the Future
Incentives of $35 per tonne for CO2-EOR and $50 per tonne for saline formation storage are economically attractive for low cost sources of CO2 (high purity sources from ethanol production, refining, and fertilizer production)
Slow progress in CCUS scale-up has damaged the credibility of CCUS as a mitigation option around the world
Effective response to 45 Q legislation provides a chance for turning this perception around
45 Q also buys-down the risk of advanced EOR
Increase t-CO2 injected per bbl of oil produced
Creates carbon neutral oil production
Learning by doing for advanced CO2-EOR (gravity stable injection)
Reinvigorates investment in brown-field oil reservoirs for CO2-EOR and as storage resources – avoiding large investment in potentially stranded assets
Puts in place infrastructure (e.g. pipelines, wells, and monitoring) for taking advantage of stacked reservoirs for large scale storage

3. A Simple Economic Model for Advanced CO2-EOR (Net Emissions~-1 t/bbl)
Conventional CO2 EOR (3 bbl./T)
CO2 EOR plus Storage (1 bbl. /T)
Oil Price $/bbl.a
100 75 50
(CO2 Acq, Cost $/T)
-60
-45
-30
CO2 Acq. Cost $/bbl. Productionb
-20
-15
-10
Other CO2 related Cost $/bbl. Productionc
-35
-38.5
Net Margin $/bbl. pretax 45 25 5
1.5
-8.5
-18.5
CO2 EOR Production bbl. (million) 30 48
Project EOR Margin $million
1350
750
150 72
-408
-888
CO2 incentive to break even
42.6
38.6
34.6
From Benson and Duetch, 2018, submitted.

4. Conventional CO2-EOR: With Water-Alternating-Gas
From Lindley, 1986.

5. Co-Optimization of CO2-EOR and Storage: Gravity Stable Immiscible Flood
From Rao, 2006

6. Co-Optimization of CO2-EOR and Storage: Gravity Stable Immiscible Flood
From Daniel Hatchell, Stanford MS Thesis, 2017

7. Co-Optimization of CO2-EOR and Storage: Exsolution Enhanced EOR
10 API Gravity Oil
From Scott McClaughlin, Stanford MS Thesis, 2016

8. Billion Dollar Question
Unconventionals?

9. Action on CCUS is Needed Now: 45 Q Provides the Best Chance to Put CCUS Back on the CO2 Mitigation Map
Financial incentives are significant
Co-optimization of CO2-EOR and storage needs innovation, experimentation, and learning
45 Q also buys-down the risk of advanced EOR
Supports building infrastructure for long term CO2 mitigation with CCUS
Creating a new narrative: Carbon Neutral Oil