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Traditional primary (natural reservoir pressure) and secondary production (repressure the reservoir) methods typically recover something like one third of the oil in place, leaving the balance behind. This was understandable as the cost of a newly found barrel of oil was far less than a cost of trying to enhanced recover an additional barrel.

The US Department of Energy (March 2006) issued a series of optimistic reports about the potential for carbon-dioxide-based enhanced oil recovery methods (CO2-EOR) to lead to huge increases in U.S. crude oil production.

"These promising new technologies could further help us reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil," Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said. "By using the proven technique of carbon sequestration, we get the double benefit of taking carbon dioxide out of air while getting more oil out of the earth."

With appropriate enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies, it is estimated in Malaysia alone that 1.7 BSTB of this “stranded” resource may become technically recoverable from already discovered fields.

Typical techniques will seek to either:

• increase the viscousity of water , decrease the viscousity of oil or both
• extract the oil with a solvent ( such as carbon dioxide)
• reduce the interfacial tension between the oil and water

It is estimated that a further 100MMSTB could be recovered with the appropriate technology from proven small fields which are currently deemed uneconomic due to its size and location.

This large undeveloped oil resource base offers promise that a renaissance is possible for the domestic oil industry, greatly improving the nation’s trade balance and energy security.

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