Just consider the following:
:: Louisiana spews more industrial carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other state in the nation (roughly 36 million metric tons of CO2). A study released last month by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy found that the Bayou State surpassed the refinery-rich Texas in 2002.
:: As Congress crows about foreign energy dependence, various calculations place more than 1 trillion barrels of oil still in domestic ground, leftover from drilling and missed by conventional efforts. Back home, the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association estimates that local oilmen are forced to leave roughly 70% of their black gold in the dirt because most operations aren’t that efficient.
On the digital page, these two nuggets of information don’t have much in common. But thanks to advancements in oil exploration during the past decade, CO2 and increased production are more intertwined than ever. Lobbyists and lawmakers say there’s going to be a focus in the spring regular session on tertiary recovery projects, or what are more commonly known as enhanced oil recoveries. The process involves the injection of certain gases or chemicals – in Louisiana’s case, carbon dioxide – into a reservoir, at which point it expands and pushes up the oil that was missed by a previous operation. To read the full story, click here. — Jeremy Alford
