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Apache kicks off Midale Unit CO2 EOR Project
December 2005
Apache officially kicked off its $95-million Midale Unit CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Project – which will keep Midale’s oil fields producing for an additional 25 years – with an Oct. 20 reception at the Saskatchewan city’s recreation center.
Several Apaches, including President, CEO and COO Steve Farris and Apache Canada President Brian Schmidt, participated in the event. Also in attendance were representatives from the provincial government, Dakota Gasification (the CO2 provider), and Apache partners and contractors.
The enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project at Midale uses CO2 to increase oilfield production. Though the project was recently kicked off, its history dates back two decades. A pilot project on CO2 injection was conducted at the field, discovered in 1953, in the mid-1980s and research and experiments continued in following years.
It is projected that up to 26 million cubic feet of CO2 will be injected into underground formations daily to help recover an additional 45- to 60-million barrels of oil. That injection means that CO2 recovered during oil recovery is routed underground rather than emitted into the atmosphere. Midale injection will total about 1 billion cubic feet per year.
The project will use CO2 piped in from the Dakota Gasification Co. in Beulah, N.D. A pipeline already delivers CO2 from the plant to a nearby Sas-katchewan project, so a short pipeline was added to handle the Midale project.