Enhanced oil recovery

Yeah.

Well, I mean, most of the time, Sterling, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I would be too worried about carbon dioxide if they're using when they're using it for EOR like seeping out.

Because the reason why you frack and use enhanced recovery methods in the first place is because the rock is so tight that they can't get the gas out.

Yeah, but it's not.

Tell us some of the things that we know that you're involved in.

Maybe some case studies, maybe examples of subsurface understanding, optimizing well design, improving recovery, especially EOR.

Again, we're so impressed with Oxy and your leadership, your future leadership, as well as your immediate past leadership.

Rockstar quality.

Don't just believe everything you get.

Yeah, what should people be thinking about and looking forward to and, and as they become more comfortable, people like me become more comfortable with this whole space and sphere, and what might be the limits of what we could do in terms of ultimate recovery or enhancing it and expanding our operational efficiencies or even more opportunities?

Talking about some of those things that you mentioned, like increasing recovery factors and so on, of course, the actual way to carry that out is physically, right? So enhanced oil recovery, EOR, is one of those elements where we know that we can physically do it by injecting something into the ground to the...

basically push out the oil.

So now you have 60%, 70% of the original oil in place that can be recovered, again, before fracking, and fracking has improved everything.

So 15 years ago, It was about finding another source of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.

And because over 90% of the oil fields that were compatible with CO2 EOR had no source of CO2.

And the CO2 that was being used was naturally occurring.

So the first step of the process was to desequester CO2 from the ground so that you could use it for EOR.

So we've transitioned to basically, or we are transitioning away from those as an industry, away from the naturally occurring CO2 to anthropogenic sources of CO2.

That's sort of the new motivation, but that motivation still was out there to enable CO2 EOR and really to increase the energy independence of the nation and the amount of oil that you could get out of the ground.

And at the same time, when you do the math of how much CO2 goes in the ground versus how much CO2 that barrel of oil would ultimately create, you can get to the point where more than that CO2 that the oil produces is what's being injected into the ground in order to