CO2 flooding could yield 2mb/d – eventually

For a senior oilman Gareth Roberts holds some fairly unusual views: peak oil is coming soon; crude oil is too precious to burn as transport fuel; and Big Oil should be investing massively in alternative energy.

But then Roberts is the CEO of Denbury Resources, a rare example of an oil company whose strategy is driven by an explicit recognition of peak oil. Founded in 1990, the company has grown into a $5bn independent by buying up mature fields on the Gulf coast of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and applying CO2 flooding to yield as much as 17% more of the original oil in place. But this


At the moment Denbury is by far the largest operator of CO2 flooding, although even it produces just 15,000 barrels of oil per day from the process. But Roberts reckons that in thirty years