19-06-00 The President of Ridgeway Petroleum, Walter Ruck, has announced that the company has compiled a strategic formula for reducing US reliance on imported oil by 1 %. The formula is based around the increase of domestic oil production through expanded application of CO2-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology, said Ruck.
The US currently imports around 10 mm bpd, around 55 % of domestic consumption, from OPEC and other oil-producing countries. Policy-makers are aiming to reduce this to most 50 % by 2010.

Ridgeway Petroleum holds around 14.8 tcf of CO2, the largest known global undeveloped/uncommitted reserve. Ruck has said that it takes around 6,000 cf of CO2 to recover one barrel of incremental oil from spent or nearly-spent oil fields.
The company has the capability to deliver 600 mm cfpd of CO2, making it a vital part of the recovery of 100,000 bpd from US wells. This would reduce foreign imports by one full percentage point, said Ruck.
Ruck cited oil fields in California, where CO2-based EOR is not yet widely used, as an example. There are several billion barrels of oil waiting to be recovered in these fields, and recovering 100,000 bpd, Ridgeway's CO2 reserves would last over 40 years. He also said that with production of the company's contained Helium reserves, it could probably improve the economics of EOR, during periods of low oil prices, by using emissions tax credits.