The CEO of the Energy and Environmental Research Center at UND says there is a lot of recoverable oil left in North Dakota’s Bakken and conventional oil fields.
But Charles Gorecki says it will take enhanced oil recovery efforts to get at some of it.
Gorecki says drilling efforts continue in the basin, and that has helped keep the state’s projected production of 1.2 million barrels per day.
"At some point, that starts to drop off," Gorecki said. "After that primary production is dropped off, there's still 85 to 90 percent of the oil still in place."
Gorecki says it will need something like carbon dioxide to tap into those reserves. And he says the state will need the CO2 in large amounts.
"We could use something like 100 million, 200 million tons of CO2 per year, to really start getting back to that million barrels per day," Gorecki said. But he said the problem is — North Dakota doesn't have enough CO2.
"Even with the CO2 sources we have here in the state, if we capture from all of it, that's 30 million tons per year,' Gorecki said. "If we look at CO2 from other states coming to North Dakota,. that's maybe 20 million more tons we see on the horizon right now. We need more CO2."
Gorecki did say there are some opportunities to generate more CO2 in-state.
"As we continue to produce the resources we have, oil and gas from the Bakken is a good example — put that to work in making different products — whether it by hydrogen, petrochemicals, all kinds of things," Gorecki said. "At the same time, we can capture the CO2 off of those processes, and put that back to work," Gorecki said. "IN other words, we build more infrastructure to add more value to our resources, we'll have more CO2 to potentially be used for enhanced oil recovery."
