Update of Carbon Storage Update of Carbon Storage Field ProjectsField Projects

Susan D. HovorkaBureau of Economic Geology

Jackson School of GeosciencesThe University of Texas at Austin

Presentation to Underground Injection Control (UIC) Educational Track 2007 Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Trade Fair & ConferenceWednesday, May 2, 2007

Status of Knowledge About CCS**Carbon Capture and Storage

Well Known• Trapping mechanisms• Monitoring strategies to image

and quantify plume evolution• Validity of modeling

approaches – modification of existing simulators

• Major leakage risks• Volume of storage US,

Australia, Japan, Europe

Poorly Known• Modeling/monitoring in low

permeability rocks• Monitoring to detect low rates

of leakage over long time frames

• Performance of non-matrix systems (coal, basalt)

• Risks resulting from very large scale-up

• Volume of storage in developing nations

• Performance of faults, wells

Sources of Knowledge

• IPCC Special Report on Geologic Storage– Rapidly evolving field, IPCC report used only peer

reviewed literature

• US and international networks – NETL updates www.netl.doe.gov/publications/carbon_seq/

– CO2 GeoNet www.co2geonet.com/

– CCP www.co2captureproject.org

– IEA Greenhouse http://www.co2captureandstorage.info

• Large number of meetings– examples: GHGT, NETL annual CCS meeting, EPA

working groups, IEA GHG R&D Networks

Contributions to Knowledge From Selected Field Projects

Otway

US DOE RCSP projects

Observed performance of siltstonesin retarding CO2 migration, Utsira FM,Sliepner field, North Sea

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/science/co2/Sleipner_figs_02.html

Bright injected CO2

in sandLight siltstone baffles

Top seal

Trapping Mechanisms: Structural Traps

Cornelius Reservoir Markham No. Bay City No. field Tyler and Ambrose (1986)

Well known performance ofshale seals in trapping oil and gas,

Texas Gulf Coast

Shale sealsIn white

Sandstones

Successful use of 4-D seismicfor monitoring CO2 plume

Trapping: Regional Setting of Utsira

Source: SACS Best Practices Manualhttp://www.co2store.org/TEK/FOT/SVG03178.nsf/Attachments/SACSBestPractiseManual.pdf/$FILE/SACSBestPractiseManual.pdf

Frio Brine Pilot Sitetwo test intervals

• Injection intervals: mineralogically complex Oligocene fluvial and reworked fluvial sandstones, porosity 24%, permeability 4.4 to 2.5 Darcys

• Steeply dipping 11 to 16 degrees

• Seals numerous thick shales, small fault block

• Depth 1,500 and 1657 m• Brine-rock system, no

hydrocarbons• 150 and 165 bar, 53 -60

degrees C, supercritical CO2

Injection interval

Oil production

Fresh water (USDW) zoneprotected by surface casing

Injection zones:First experiment

2004: Frio “C”Second experiment

2006 Frio “Blue”

Porosity

Fault planes

Monitoringinjection and monitoring

Observation wellInjection well

Trapping Mechanism:Frio Site Reservoir Model

Knox, Fouad, Yeh, BEG

In context of the plume, injection was in an open aquifer

Two-Phase Residual Gas Trapping

Grains Brine – filled pores

Inje

ctio

n o

f C

O2 Phase-trapped

CO2

Imbibition Drainage

Representative realistic imbibition and drainage curves for two-phase flow

CO2 Trapping as a Residual Phase

• Plume in open aquifer spreads quickly updip

• Plume in an open aquifer is trapped before it moves very far

Residual gas saturation of 5%

Residual gas saturation of 30%

TOUGH2 simulations C. Doughty LBNL

Injection well

Observation well

Monitoring Using Oil-field Type Technologies is Successful in Tracking CO2

Downhole P&T

Radial VSPCross well Seismic, EM

Downhole samplingU-tubeGas lift

Wirelinelogging

Aquifer wells (4)Gas wells Access tubes, gas sampling

Tracers

Frio Brine Pilot: Determine the subsurface distribution of injected

CO2 using diverse monitoring technologies

Monitoring Design Frio 2

Injection Well Observation Well

50 m

U-tubes

RST logs

Frio “Blue”

Sandstone

15m thick

PackersDownhole P and T

Tubing hung seismic source

and hydrophones

Injection well

Observation well

Real-time Downhole Pressure and Temperature Monitoring

CO2 breakthrough

Measurement of Perminace

5450

5500

DEPTHFEET

LithologyEff. porosity

V/V0 0.5

Seismic source

Packer

Perfs

BH Sal. - 1PPM0 400000

BH Sal. - 2PPM0 400000

BH Sal. - 3PPM0 400000

BH Sal. - 4PPM0 400000

Sigma - 1CU35 15

Sigma - 2CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 60%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 40%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 20%)CU35 15

Sigma - 1CU35 15

Sigma - 3CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 60%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 40%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 20%)CU35 15

Sigma - 1CU35 15

Sigma - 4CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 60%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 40%)CU35 15

Sigma (Sg = 20%)CU35 15

Temp. - 1DEGF125 145

Temp. - 2DEGF125 145

Temp. - 3DEGF125 145

Temp. - 4DEGF125 145

Pressure - 1PSI2340 2420

Pressure - 2PSI2340 2420

Pressure - 3PSI2340 2420

Pressure - 4PSI2340 2420

We

llbo

re s

ketc

h

West Pearl Queen

• Injection interval 7 m arkosic sandstone, oil reservoir, Permian Queen Formation

• 18% porosity, 5 -30 md• Structural dome trap -

carbonate/evaporite seals• Depth - 1350 m• 96 bar• CO2 trapped by residual

saturation + dissolution in water and oil– 62% retained under

production

%

Representative of thePermian Basin

Los Alamos National LaboratoryBill Cary

Trapping Dissolution of CO2 into Brine

1yr

5 yr

30 yr

40 yr

130 yr

330 yr

930 yr

1330 yr

2330 yr

Jonathan Ennis-King, CO2CRCJonathan Ennis-King, CSIRO Australia

Tracer Breakthrough Curves

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

10/10/2004 10/11/2004 10/12/2004 10/13/2004

C/C

max

SF6 C/Cmax

Krypton C/Cmax

PFT C/Cmax

2nd Tracer Breakthrough

3rd Tracer Breakthrough

Trapping: Frio Tracer Breakthough Curves Show Significant Dissolution of CO2 into

Brine

Barry Friefeld, LBNL; Tommy Phelps ORNL

Setting the Standard for Monitoring:IEA Weyburn project

• Devonian Midale carbonate

• Successful semi-quantitative monitoring of CO2 plume migration using 4-D seismic: 20% P-wave difference post injection

IEA Weyburn CO2 Storage and Monitoring Project

Combining CO2 storage research with oil production

• Large, high technology, well-supported research Phase I , $21 M, numerous international partners

• Complex environment containing oil, production, field operations

Petroleum TechnologyResearch Centre (PTRC)Encana, governmentsUniversity, Provincial, private

No Suitable Method for Detecting Slow Leakage

• Current monitoring: noise is large, precision is moderate

• If flux is low, .01 to 1 % of stored volume/year

• Cumulative impact to atmosphere would be unacceptable

Weyburn Soil Gas Survey

Monitoring Techniques at Nagaoka site: injection into a heterogeneous rock volume

Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) and collaboratorshttp://uregina.ca/ghgt7/PDF/papers/nonpeer/273.pdf

• Pleistocene Haizume Fm: 12 m thick mineralogically immature submarine sandstone

• 10’s mD core analysis, <10 mD hydrologic test, about 20% porosity

• 15 degree dip on flank of anticline

• 10,400 tones CO2

http://www.rite.or.jp/English/about/plng_survy/todaye/todaytre/RTtr_co2seq.pdf

Monitoring using cross well-seismic at Nagaoka site

• Logging though non-metallic casing using induction, neutron, sonic detected breakthough after injection 4000 tones 40 m away

• Cross well tomography imaged plume but failed to detect breakthough

• 4-D seismic suggests strongly anisotropic CO2 movement

Subsurface Monitoring Above Injection Zones – a Proposed Solution to Complexity

• Close to perturbation

• Quiescent relative to the surface

• High signal to noise ratio

Aquifer and USDW

Atmosphere

Biosphere

Vadose zone & soil

Seal

Seal

Monitoring Zone

CO2 plume

Adequacy of Modeling: CO2 Saturation Observed with Cross-well Seismic Tomography

vs. Modeled: Frio example

(B)

Tom Daley and Christine Doughty LBNL

Injection well

Observation well

10

0 f

t

X-well is a cross section of the plume

Cross-Well Seismic Tomogram

Adequate US Storage Volume: Preliminary “Fairways” Map

Com

plex

geo

logy

No

inve

ntor

y at

tem

pted

Low Permeability is Typical:more studies needed in tight rocks

<.0.01.01-0.10.1 -11 – 10>10

Hydraulic conductivitym/day

Mixed data types – core, well tests, and models

Successful Use of Horizontal Well Technology in Low Permeability Sandstones

– BP In Salah Project, Algeria

• Inject 1 million tones/year of CO2 from gas processing facility

• Injection into water leg of same reservoir

• 800 m-ling horizontals

• 5-10 mD Pennsylvanian sandstone

• Injection underway• Large monitoring project

mobilized – 4-D seismic, soil gas, microseismic array

http://ior.rml.co.uk/issue11/events/past/spe/Ian Wright, BP

PNNL and Geothermal EnergyIndia.

Example of the Global Question of Capacity: Deccan Traps, India

Layered Basalt – Role for Geochemical Trapping?

• Thick section – > 2000 m, large volume

• Layered lower and higher permeability

• Seal performance is uncertain

• High reactivity with CO2 - formation of minerals

• So could CO2 be retained long enough to be trapped by mineral reactions? Fill and Spill with reaction with Basalt

An example of need for assessment of quality and quantity of geologic storage outside of the US

Otway Basin Project -Australia• Planned injection of

100,000 tones of natural CO2 into Cretaceous Warre sandstone depleted gas reservoir

• Large volume injection

• Fault seal – will test fault stability under injection

• Test monitoring in the presence of gas

Well Understood Risk:Unexpected Results of Injection

Water tableUnderground source of drinking water

Earthquake

Escape to groundwater,surface water, or air via long flowpath

Substitute undergroundinjection for airrelease

Escape of CO2 or brine togroundwater,surface wateror air throughflaws in the seal

Failure of well cement orcasing resulting in leakage

Risk in Terms of Exceeding Capacity

• Spill from structure

• Exceed fracture pressure of seal

• Far-field effects – leakage of brine from injection interval

Large scale-up

Very large scale-up

Reservoir

Status of Knowledge About CCS

Well Known• Trapping mechanisms• Monitoring strategies to image

and quantify plume evolution• Validity of modeling

approaches – modification of existing simulators

• Major leakage risks• Volume of storage US,

Australia, Japan, Europe

Poorly Known• Modeling/monitoring in low

permeability rocks• Monitoring to detect low rates

of leakage over long time frames

• Performance of non-matrix systems (coal, basalt)

• Risks resulting from very large scale-up

• Volume of storage in developing nations

• Performance of faults, wells