Potential of CO₂-enhanced oil recovery coupled with carbon capture and storage in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in the UAE

The potential of adopting CO₂-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) coupled with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at a large scale is significant for major oil exporters like the United Arab Emirates. We develop a system dynamics model of the interactions between the demand of CO₂-EOR to sustain oil output as reservoirs age, the country's production targets, and the required carbon prices to accelerate the adoption of CO₂-EOR with CCS. We simulate 12 scenarios that represents different pathways for oil production, CO₂ emissions growth and performance of CO₂-EOR. The scenarios consider the sensitivity to key parameters: net utilization factor of CO₂ for the marginal barrel of oil produced, the time it takes for injected CO₂ to reach the production well (breakthrough time), and the share of EOR wells going to CO₂-EOR operation. We find that a carbon price of 10–15 $/t CO₂ in the first decade is needed in order to offset the cost of the CCS operations with the potential of breaking even by 2030. The large-scale adoption of CO₂-EOR with CCS in the UAE can help in meeting 2.2–39.2% of the UAE 2nd national committed reduction target, i.e., 72.85 million tons of CO₂ reduction per year by 2030, depending on CO₂ breakthrough time and its net utilization factor. It may also help in freeing natural gas that could supply 12–20% of local energy needs extending its use with the CCS system. This study demonstrates a systematic modeling approach that quantifies complex interactions at the system level towards cleaner production practices.