A project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy made a technological breakthrough this year for CO2 use in enhanced oil recovery.

• National Energy Technology Laboratory. "CO2 Injection Boosts Oil Recovery, Captures Emissions: DOE-Funded Watershed Project in Kansas Demonstrates Technology." 3 January 2005 at www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2005/tl_kansas_co2.html

The project recovered CO2 byproducts from ethanol production and recycled them in an enhanced oil recovery project in central Kansas. The Department of Energy states a single plant could both provide injection fluid to assist in the production of five million oil barrels a year for 25 years, as well as sequester 1.5 million tons of CO2.

Implications: Enhancing the efficiency of oil recovery directly increases supply. While 5 million barrels is a tiny share of annual US demand, if this technology were applied on a larger scale, the additional supply could have implications for oil imports and prices. On the sequestration side, while questions remain about long-term monitoring of geologically stored carbon, the benefits of avoiding its release into the atmosphere are significant. Finally, the process is a net economic winner: according to DOE, if all ethanol plants' waste CO2 were sequestered by enhanced oil recovery projects, the benefits could equate to US $88 million over a decade. Such calculations do not even include the cost of avoided climate change -- with extremely high values.