Technology advances, higher oil prices, reduced costs, and environmental needs have aligned to create a ?perfect storm? of growth opportunity for a well-established method for enhancing oil recovery (EOR) in the U.S.: carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding. The U.S. Department of Energy is supporting critical research to help America's oil producers take full advantage of that growth opportunity (see table on p. 3). CO2 flooding is the fastest-growing EOR technique in the U.S. While production volumes and the number of projects for thermal, chemical, and other EOR processes have fallen off sharply since 1980, the number of CO2 projects has more than tripled, to more than 70 projects as of yearend 2004. Meanwhile, CO2 production volumes have jumped twentyfold since the early 1980s (see chart on p. 2). The CO2 share of U.S. crude oil production was estimated at almost 206,000 barrels per day in 2004, according to the Oil & Gas Journal's biennial EOR Survey, published April 12, 2004. That equals about 4% of the Nation's total. With the proper incentives, CO2 EOR output has the potential to double by 2010 and quadruple by 2020, according to an analysis by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).