Energy is an essential enabler of human progress. Advancing human progress and economic development while tackling the global climate issue is the great challenge of our time.
The transition to a low carbon future will be a complex process. Alternatives will take significant time and sustained investment to meet a meaningful share of the rising global energy demand.
To maintain energy security and meet the needs of a rising global population hydrocarbon-based energy sources will be counted on to meet the bulk of the world’s energy demand well into the future.
At Saudi Aramco, we are committed to playing our part by employing an interdisciplinary approach to innovative and cost-effective solutions for carbon management, focusing on CO2 capture and sequestration, CO2 emissions reduction and converting emissions to value.
Carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery
We believe capturing and storing CO2 could potentially contribute to significantly reducing global emissions.
Carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing waste CO2 from large sources, such as power plants, storing it and depositing it underground so it will not enter the atmosphere.
At one of the Middle East’s largest CO2 capture and storage demonstration projects, we’re proving it’s possible to capture CO2, inject it in our reservoirs, and test the feasibility of enhancing oil recovery in the process.
Every day, we have the capability to capture and process 45 million standard cubic feet of CO2 at our plant in Hawiyah.
The captured CO2 is then piped 85 km to the ‘Uthmaniyah oil field and injected into the oil reservoir, sequestering the gas while also helping to maintain pressure in the reservoir and recover more oil. Since the initial injection of CO2 in 2015, we have doubled oil production rates from four of our wells.