DOE is seeking applications that will utilize one or more fit-for-purpose horizontal, hydraulically fractured well or wells-of-opportunity in established unconventional oil plays to carry out field-validated CO2 injection experiments that will focus on the following topics:

• Assessment and validation of increases in incremental oil recovery and associated carbon storage through CO2 injection over time, including optimization of “huff-n-puff” or continuous injection, and production cycles and characterization of CO2 storage potential during and after the EOR process. A requirement of 18 months of CO2 injection is required for project(s) to be considered successful and to acquire sufficient data for analysis.
• Validation of innovative equipment configurations, injection strategies, conformance control strategies, and well designs that might make it possible to optimize CO2 injection and incremental recovery (e.g., U-tube wells to inject into lateral from the toe as well as from the heel of the horizontal lateral, WAG (water alternating gas) and/or surfactant, diverter, chemical injection strategies, use of downhole fiber optic cables to characterize the locations and volumes injected along the length of the lateral well bore).
• Characterization of CO2 diffusion and mobility in horizontal, fractured rocks with very low matrix permeability as a means to better understand reservoir specific sweep/placement efficiency and permanent CO2 storage opportunities.
• Assessment of risks associated with CO2 injection and unconventional reservoir management, including maintaining appropriate reservoir pressure above miscibility and below fracture pressure throughout the “huff-n-puff” process.
• Best practices for monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of injected CO2 throughout the lifecycle of injection, diffusion, sweep, and production, including the identification of potential leakage pathways outside the reservoir, wellbore integrity.
• In-situ characterization of the geomechanical and geochemical effects of CO2 injection and repressuring of the reservoir, their effect on the stimulated reservoir volume (SRV), and the relative contributions of CO2 miscible displacement and increased SRV on incremental oil recovery. Techniques focusing on optimizing and characterizing sweep efficiency, conformance control, associated storage mechanisms (adsorption, structural trapping) and their effects on EOR and carbon storage capabilities of unconventional reservoirs are of particular interest.
• Collection of data in support of a future carbon lifecycle assessment (LCA) to better understand the extent to which CO2-EOR technologies applied in unconventional reservoirs can reduce the carbon intensity of the incremental oil produced, as well as its broader environmental and climate impacts. For this FOA, net reduced carbon footprint oil refers to oil produced under carbon balance conditions where the mass of CO2 stored approaches the mass of CO2 emitted within a specific boundary. Data collected at the test site should include all the variables in the mass balance approach described under subpart RR of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reporting Program. Additional data should include the CO2 source and data on larger-framework environmental and climate impacts with the goal of answering the question of whether CO2 is the best enhanced oil recovery process to produce the same incremental oil.

The one Area of Interest (AOI) for this Announcement is:

• AOI 1: Evaluating and Validating the Incremental Oil Production via CO2-EOR Injection in Unconventional Oil Reservoirs Using Horizontal, Hydraulically Fractured Wells and Assessing the CO2 Storage Potential