The popular image of oil derricks place them in sunny locales, in deserts and at sea. But with the search for new oil reserves spreading, the ability to use solar power for enhanced oil recovery faces some elemental challenges.
Southern California, where GlassPoint Solar operates a facility, satisfies the two main requirements for solar thermal enhanced oil recovery –abundant sunlight and heavy oil. But these requirements limit the technology’s application in other areas of the country. Within the US, GlassPoint CEO Rod MacGregor mentioned only West Texas as prospective for solar thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) use.
“You’ve got both heavy oil and reasonable sunshine,” MacGregor said.
And facility design may not be transferable between regions, as not all concentrating solar power (CSP) systems are well-suited to all climates.
The Power Tower
The Coalinga project uses a “power tower” system, which uses automated flat mirrors that focus solar energy on a central tower to generate steam, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. The system requires several acres of preferably flat land and close proximity to the point of consumption in addition to abundant sunlight, says oil giant Chevron, which is working to deploy solar EOR.
For more on how oil majors are using solar power in oil extraction, see: Oil Majors Seek Power Of The Sun.
GlassPoint’s facilities employ a trough system, which uses curved reflectors that focus concentrated sunlight on a pipe filled with water to create steam. Its systems are encased in a glass structure, similar to an agricultural greenhouse, that protects the reflectors from inhospitable environmental conditions. An automated cleaning system keeps the greenhouse roof free of build-up to ensure that sunlight reaches the panels.
Protection from the elements is essential for CSP facilities in the Middle East, where higher humidity levels, combined with very fine sand, can lead to a build-up on reflectors that undermines their effectiveness, according to MacGregor.
“Anything shiny gets covered in this crusty layer of goop,” he said.
Solar In Arabia
GlassPoint’s facilities are designed to manage these environmental conditions, and to be cost competitive with natural gas absent incentives, leaving the firm uniquely well-positioned to expand in the Middle East, MacGregor said. Solar-to-steam EOR is an attractive prospect–especially in Gulf Cooperation Council countries–owing to an abundance of sunlight and heavy oil projects, as well as increasing pressure to satisfy growing natural gas consumption.
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), owned by the Omani government (60%), Shell (34%), Total (4%), and Partex (2%) has numerous thermal EOR projects.
“The way we make steam at the moment in most of the operation areas is actually by burning natural gas…that’s what most operators do,” said PDO technology advisor Syham Bentouati at the commissioning of GlassPoint’s solar thermal EOR facility in California in February.
“If we can free the natural gas for other uses, for developing for example petrochemical industries, for exporting it as LNG, or any other applications, certainly that can only be a good thing,” Bentouati said.
On The Ground
GlassPoint has an office in Oman, and expects to announce a new solar EOR agreement in the region in early August. MacGregor said the firm is interested in additional prospects in the area, especially in places with existing thermal EOR projects, such as the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and northern Kuwait.
Existing projects in the GCC include US independent Occidental’s use of steam flood to boost production from the Mukhaizna field in Oman, and Chevron’s large-scale pilot steamflood project in the Neutral Zone, which could produce over 500,000 barrels per day of oil if it moves to full-field expansion.
The project portfolio of solar thermal technology firm Brightsource, tapped by Chevron to design and help build a solar EOR system at its Coalinga field in California, is weighted towards power generation, and it is unclear if the firm aims to expand its presence in solar thermal EOR. The Coalinga facility is its only such project to date. And while the company intends to jointly market and bid for concentrating solar projects in the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa, and Southern Europe with generation, transmission, and infrastructure firm Alstom, it has already hit a stumbling block at Coalinga.
The firm cited “significant cost overruns related to the project” in a June 2011 SEC filing. “If the Coalinga Solar-to-Steam for EOR project does not meet expectations, our ability to sell additional thermal EOR systems may be negatively impacted,” the company said.
