Carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) in Alberta offers dual economic and carbon management benefits, with the potential to store 1. 1 billion tons of CO2 in oil fields while supporting infrastructure for future saline aquifer storage. Despite this promise, greenhouse gas emissions from large-scale CO2-EOR deployment have not been well characterized. This study evaluates the well-to-refinery gate (WtR) emissions of Alberta’s CO2-EOR operations through an integrated technoeconomic and life cycle assessment of 13, 948 field-pools from the provincial database. A total of 2950 technically viable field-pools were rigorously screened, with 2339 economically feasible field-pools analyzed across 8 scenarios using the Oil Production Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimator (OPGEE) coupled with a technoeconomic assessment model incorporating varying oil prices, CO2 offset prices, and operational performance metrics. Results reveal that the WtR carbon intensity ranges from 7. 0 to 32 g CO2e/MJ (volume-weighted average of 10. 4 g CO2e/MJ) under base-case conditions (75/bbl oil, C 50/t CO2 offset). Spearman analysis identifies oil production rate, project net present value, and gas flooding injection ratio as the key drivers of emission variability. These findings highlight Alberta’s capacity to produce 2. 22 billion barrels of incremental oil while advancing CO2, providing a robust framework to optimize operations for minimal emissions and maximum economic returns in a geologically complex landscape.
Jabbar et al. (2026) studied this question.