Spiritus Secures Preliminary Deals to Supply CO2 for EOR

Spiritus Technologies PBC has signed three letters of intent with oil and gas operators in the United States Gulf Coast, Midwest and Rockies to supply over three million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

The preliminary agreements with a mix of public and private U.S. oil and gas operators cover developed fields. "Based on industry-standard CO2 utilization rates and project lives, the three projects could support recovery of more than 70 million incremental barrels of oil", the New Mexico-based company said in a press release.‍

"Federal studies estimate that CO2 enhanced oil recovery could unlock as much as 137 billion barrels of technically recoverable U.S. oil".‍

"One of the biggest constraints on CO2 EOR deployment has been getting enough affordable CO2 to the fields that need it", said Spiritus co-founder and chief executive Charles Cadieu, adding the company is pursuing discussions with oil and gas operators across major hydrocarbon regions in the U.S.‍

"U.S. oil producers have used CO2 to recover additional oil from mature fields for more than 50 years", Spiritus said. "Operators inject compressed CO2 into a reservoir, where it helps mobilize oil left behind after earlier production. CO2 that returns with the produced fluids is separated and reinjected into the field.

"The constraint has historically been supply. Enhanced oil recovery requires large, sustained volumes of CO2, while operators have largely depended on naturally occurring underground CO2 deposits or industrial sources connected to oil fields through pipeline networks.

"Where affordable CO2 and transportation infrastructure do not reach a field, as much as 65 percent of the original oil remains underground.

"Spiritus' technology captures CO2 from the atmosphere and is designed to produce it at the oil field, giving operators access to new supply without relying solely on natural CO2 deposits, distant industrial emitters or long-distance transportation infrastructure".

Spiritus said the cost of its CO2 supply would be competitive with conventional supply, "addressing one of the most common objections to using atmospheric CO2 at industrial scale".

"An individual enhanced oil recovery development can require hundreds of thousands or millions of tonnes of CO2 annually, with demand continuing over many years. Unlike markets where customers pay primarily to remove CO2, oil producers purchase the molecule because it helps recover additional oil"‍, it said.

Cadieu said, "Much of the next increment of U.S. oil production can come from fields that already have wells, pipelines and infrastructure around them. In many of those fields, the missing piece is affordable CO2. Spiritus is building a new source of supply around that constraint".

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