We often talk about carbon capture and sequestration on Behind the Plug, but what happens after carbon dioxide gas is “captured?” Sure, we can store it in the sea, store it underground or feed it to algae, but there’s another thing we can do – we can use carbon dioxide to recover depleted oil fields.

This process is called enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a general term that describes methods to increase the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field. It can be done in many ways, but the most commonly used approach is to inject captured carbon dioxide into depleted oil fields to help jumpstart recovery.

Because EOR increases oil production here within our borders, it improves local economies and reduces our nation’s dependence on imported oil. Fortunately, the government is helping to fund and develop EOR projects all across the country.

One such project is the Basin Electric EOR program, which was selected in July by the Department of Energy to receive $408 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Basin Electric, an ACCCE member, captures CO2 from the Dakota Gasification Company’s Great Plains Synfuels plant in Beulah, N.D. and transfers it to depleted oil fields in Canada.

Basin Electric relies on a pipeline to deliver its captured CO2 to Canada, which is not uncommon in EOR since many power plants aren’t situated next to oil fields. We actually got to experience captured CO2 get injected into the Cortez Pipeline in New Mexico during our latest travels.

We’ve seen that the technology pays off – virtually all of the injected CO2 is expected to remain permanently sequestered in Canada’s oil fields long after they have been abandoned – and Dakota Gas now captures and delivers up to 49 percent of CO2 produced at the Synfuels plant.

And Tenaska Energy’s Trailblazer facility, which we visited during the America’s Power Factuality Tour, will be able to capture, dehydrate, compress and deliver up to 90 percent of its CO2 via pipeline to the Permian oil fields in West Texas by 2014.

Imagine if every coal plant in the world could do that. Not only would we greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but we would be energy independent. How’s that for clean coal technology?