A critical review of goal conflicts in carbon capture, utilization, and storage-enhanced oil recovery: Is “oil recovery” always synergistic with “storage”?

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a comprehensive synthesis of technical and economic conflicts in CCUS-EOR, with quantitative evidence and a decision framework for further research.

🏢実務担当者:Offers actionable insights for designing CCUS-EOR projects that maximize storage integrity, relevant for sustainability reporting and carbon credit claims.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for policy mechanisms that incentivize storage over production, informing carbon pricing and regulatory frameworks.

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) combined with CO 2 -enhanced oil recovery (CO 2 -EOR) is widely viewed as a strategy to couple hydrocarbon production with geological CO 2 storage. However, this review demonstrates that oil recovery and CO 2 storage are not inherently synergistic but exhibit a duality shaped by operational design, reservoir heterogeneity, and economic drivers. Three specific mechanisms create conflicts between these objectives: (1) water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection—while improving sweep efficiency—can displace previously stored CO 2 , with coreflooding experiments showing a 13.4% decline in retained CO 2 compared to continuous injection; (2) geological heterogeneity, particularly fracture networks and high-permeability streaks, causes CO 2 channeling that bypasses oil-rich zones, reducing both recovery and storage by 25%–40%; and (3) economic incentives prioritizing oil production over sequestration lead to a 3:1 trade-off ratio—nearly three units of storage lost for each additional unit of oil gained under high oil prices. To address these conflicts, we synthesize advances in machine-learning-assisted optimization (e.g., graph network surrogate models (GNSM) achieving 120× speedup), conformance control using CO 2 -responsive gels and ionic liquids (plugging efficiency >95%), and advanced injection fluids such as formate-alternating-gas (FAG) that simultaneously increase recovery by 19.5% and storage by 17.9%. Life cycle assessment (LCA) confirms that properly designed CO 2 -EOR can achieve net carbon negativity when system boundaries include produced oil combustion, but this conclusion is boundary-dependent. We further synthesize these findings into a decision framework that classifies CCUS-EOR projects into high-synergy, forced trade-off, and incompatible zones based on reservoir-engineering challenges and carbon policy strength. We conclude that without actively managing these conflicts through advanced engineering and policy interventions, CO 2 -EOR risks functioning primarily as a production technology with incidental storage rather than a genuine carbon management strategy. Priority research directions include multi-scale coupled modeling for long-term storage security, real-time monitoring in extreme environments (offshore and deep high-pressure reservoirs), and integration of technical optimization with carbon pricing and regulatory frameworks.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petsci.2026.07.047first seen 2026-08-01 05:57:16