Oil recovery

You pump carbon dioxide into a played-out oil field, the CO2 will stay underground while a lot more oil will flow to the surface. This technology has been boosting oil production for decades - long before anyone was concerned with global warming.

But these days, it faces a problem: Not enough CO2.

That's right. There is a process that can pump up oil production, permanently store vast quantities of carbon dioxide and make lots and lots of money, all at the same time.

But in a terrific irony of the industrial age, it faces a shortage of affordable CO2, the very compound whose increasing abundance has Earthlings fretting about rising sea levels and changing weather patterns.

That's a gap the U.S. should fill. So, a bipartisan coalition that counts oil producers, coal burners and environmentalists as supporters has a proposal to do just that.

It's called the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, and it deserves Congress' support.

Some on the right don't like the idea because it's prompted in part by concerns about global warming. Some on the left don't like the idea because it boosts rather than throttles production of fossil fuels.

But across the spectrum, plenty of others recognize that this is flat-out a formula for Williston-like prosperity that carries a side benefit of sequestering CO2. Both Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., are supporters, as is a bipartisan lineup of others in Congress. ...

Said Conrad in a statement, "Our country has tens of billions of barrels of oil that, until now, has been out of reach."

Enhanced oil recovery can increase domestic production of oil, decrease reliance on imported oil and cut CO2 emissions in a fiscally responsible way, Conrad said. Congress and the American people should agree.

- Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald