HOUSTON, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from the University of Houston, Texas, have launched a project of capturing carbon dioxide to boost oil recovery, the university said on Monday.
According to a public release by the university on Monday, the 1.4 million U.S. dollars project, launched in a field in the Indian state of Assam, aims to reduce the country's carbon footprint
The project is part of an ongoing partnership launched last year between the university and Oil India Limited, a national oil company in India.
The initial phase included the calculation by the researchers that the company's oil reserves are substantially higher than previously thought, as well as recommendations that increased production by 21 percent at one well alone.
The project is led by Ganesh Thakur, who was recruited by the university in 2016 as director of Energy Industrial Partnerships. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and a former executive at Chevron Corporation, Thakur also serves as Distinguished Professor of Petroleum Engineering.
He has overseen both Phase 1 of the partnership, cemented by a Memorandum of Understanding signed last year, and Phase 2, which focuses on demonstrating the effectiveness of flooding key oilfields in northeastern India with carbon dioxide, a technique that has been used to enhance oil recovery in the United States for 45 years.
