Carbon Dioxide Enhance Oil Recovery (CO2 EOR) project located at north Uthamaniyah of the giant Ghawar Field is one of Saudi Aramco initiatives toward the decarbonization under Aramco’s ambition to achieve net-zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions across its wholly-owned operated assets by 2050. The CO2 EOR facility was started up as a pilot project in 2015 and had been changed to permanent facility in 2023 with an expansion plan among the company. During the journey of this project, 14 prestigious international awards were received such as (World Oil, ADIPEC, iChemE and others). The captured CO2 in the recovery plant located at Hawiyah area is being pumped through dense phase pump through 85 km pipeline toward the injection area at Uthamaniyah field. The intent of this injection is to store the CO2 in the reservoir along with enhancing the oil recovery. This project resulted in a cumulative total of about 1.57 MMtCO2 stored in the reservoir since CO2 injection started in 2015. It is worth mentioning that more than 50% of the injected CO2 is being stored permanently in the reservoir, which is a major contribution of South Ghawar Producing Department toward the global environment. Beside the CO2 injection, a dedicated production facility had been constructed to process the unsorted CO2 part of the EOR project. It is worth to highlight that this facility is being constructed with special material to accommodate the corrosivity of the CO2 media along with special compression train and flaring system.

Author: Abdulaziz Ahmed Al-Arfaj

Published in: World Congress on Sustainable Technologies (WCST-2023)

• Date of Conference: 13-15 November 2023
• DOI: 10.20533/WCST.2023.0025
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-64-8
• Conference Location: St Anne’s College, Oxford University, UK