The 25^th Anniversary edition and 2019 CO₂ Conference was conducted during the week of December 9^th at the sparkling new Bush Convention Center in downtown Midland, Texas located at the heart of the Permian Basin.  The Conference week covered all subjects related to CO₂ including CO₂ EOR, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS), cyclic gas injection, and the emerging commercial exploitation of Residual Oil Zones.  For the first time, the practical aspects of cyclic gas injection were included in the agenda topics since much of the technology for huff n’ puff projects stems from the knowledge accumulated within and related to the body of CO₂ injection projects.  The attending audience professionals associated with the Conference and operating the growing number of CO₂ EOR projects are expanding their expertise to the growing body of cyclic injection projects in the unconventional reservoirs.  The Midland location of the Conference week makes it especially germane to the folks seeking practical experience and actual data from field-tested projects.  The objective of the Conference Week is to help implement more and better field projects by disseminating the practical lessons being learned.  The presentations are available on this website for this current and past conferences.

Monday was devoted to the Carbon Management subject and all the new thinking related to CO₂ capture and geologic storage.  45Q tax credits took center stage with project planning – some even very large 100 million to billion-dollar projects needing to capture their emission streams and find a subsurface storage site for capture streams.

Tuesday featured an all-day CO₂ field trip to the SACROC flood and surface facilities operated by Kinder Morgan CO₂ about 90 minutes east of Midland.  This is the longest-lived CO₂ flood in the world and is still making >28,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) and storing huge volumes of CO₂ while doing so.  The recent recognition of a thick zone of residual oil beneath the field that contains as much as 2 billion bo promises to make the project continue another 10 years on top of the 45 years of CO₂ injection to date.

The organizers of the Conference were extremely excited to present on Wednesday, Dec 11th, the first-time airing of a short course on the subject of natural and induced transmissive fractures.  The evolution of horizontal well drilling technologies has illuminated a dramatic increase in the ability to both detect and witness the effects of the fractures on well production.  High water cuts, altered properties of the oil, and sour oil and gas production are just three of the effects of stimulating into large-scale, fluid-conductive natural fractures.  The diagnostics used to detect the fractures were addressed along with several case histories from the Permian Basin and around the world as part of the full-day agenda.  Vertical natural fractures have generally gone unnoticed in the age of vertical wells so insights as to their occurrence, properties and effects were rare in the past and are now available for the first time.

The Thursday and Friday morning sessions provided the ever-popular focus on International and U.S. CO2 EOR case histories, cyclic gas injection projects, and an update for folks on the 650-well horizontal ROZ, play in the San Andres formation of the Permian Basin.  These sessions are unique in that they offered field best practices for the design and execution of new and expanding injection project opportunities.

You can easily navigate to all of the newly available presentations via the 2019 agenda page.