Fossil Fuels:

Fossil Fuels, A Strong Foundation

Fossil fuels provide 87 percent of today’s energy. A stable energy supply must be maintained in order to bridge to an alternative energy future.

The Foundation supports efforts to maintain Texas’ vibrant fossil fuel economy.

Texas supplies 20 percent of the nation’s oil production, one-third of the nation’s natural gas production, a quarter of the nation’s refining capacity and nearly 60 percent of the nation’s chemical manufacturing.

The Texas energy and petrochemical clusters employ 600,000 people, which represent 70 percent and 15 percent, respectively, of the total U.S. workforce in those industries.

Oil

Texas has consistently led the nation in petroleum production since the early 20th century and we have one-fourth of total U.S. oil reserves.

Texas produced 397 million barrels of crude oil in 2006 and petroleum products accounted for half of the 12 quadrillion BTUs we consumed in 2005.

Texas can refine 4.5 million barrels of oil a day at its 23 refineries and we have one-fourth of total U.S. oil reserves.

The oil and natural gas industry account for almost $160 billion, or 15 percent, of Texas’ gross state product.

DOE Funds EOR Research

The goal of this project is to develop a new CO2 injection enhanced oil recovery (CO2 EOR) process using engineered nanoparticles with optimized surface coatings that has better volumetric sweep efficiency and a wider application range than conventional CO2 EOR processes. The objectives are to (1) identify the characteristics of the optimal nanoparticles that generate extremely stable CO2 foams in situ in reservoir regions without oil; (2) develop a novel method of mobility control using “self-guiding” foams with smart nanoparticles; and (3) extend the applicability of the new method to reservoirs having a wide range of salinity, temperatures, and heterogeneity.

Performer: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712-0228

Background: Although EOR with CO2 is practiced domestically on large scale, the potential for expansion is enormous. The single greatest obstacle to fully realizing that potential is the inherently poor volumetric sweep efficiency of the process. The very low viscosity of CO2 and its relatively low density lead to severe channeling and segregation by gravity override. Most of the CO2 EOR projects in the U.S. are in carbonate reservoirs, which tend to have high-permeability layers or networks of very high permeability fractures. High CO2 mobility within these portions of the reservoirs results in very low sweep efficiencies.

While the water-alternating-gas (WAG) process is commonly used to provide modest conformance control, the ongoing search for better solutions has motivated extensive research on the use of surfactant-stabilized CO2 foams. The formation of CO2-in-water foams lowers the CO2 mobility resulting in improved sweep efficiency.

DOE Funds EOR Research (January 2011) -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded seven research grants to begin this year that will further develop the expanding Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) industry in the United States. Next generation CO2-EOR has the potential to produce over 80 billion barrels of oil, using new techniques including injection of much larger volumes of CO2, innovative flood design to deliver CO2 to un-swept areas of a reservoir, and improved mobility control of the injected CO2.

Natural Gas

Texas is the nation’s largest producer and consumer of natural gas, providing one-fourth of U.S. supplies and consuming one-sixth, primarily in the industrial and electricity generating sectors.

Texas produced 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2006 – nearly half again as much as we consumed and almost 30 percent of total U.S. marketed production.

Natural gas is the most common fuel used in Texas for electricity generation accounting for almost half the electricity on Texas’ grid in 2006.

 

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)

Texas uses more liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that all other states combined, largely because of the petrochemical industry.

Texas consumed more than 400 million barrels of LPG for fuel in 2005, almost 60 percent of all LPG consumed in the country. The state’s industrial sector was the largest consumer, accounting for 97 percent of all Texas consumption and 70 percent of national consumption.

Texas was the fourth-largest consumer of LPG for transportation in 2005, accounting for 6 percent of the national total for this purpose.

Texas had 525 LGP fueling stations in 2006, 23 percent of the national total.

 

Coal

Texas’ 11 coal-fueled utility plants generated 145 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2006, almost 40 percent of the state’s total electricity output.

The United States has the world’s largest known coal reserves – 270 billion recoverable tons, enough to last almost 240 years at current usage.

More than 96 percent of the coal consumed in 2006 – almost 100 million tons – was used to generate electricity.

Texas’ 13 operating surface mines produced 45 million tons of coal in 2006, contributing 2,200 mining jobs to the Texas economy