Carbon Capture and Geological Storage
Preserving Sound Practices in the Field
A December 7th, 2022 Short Course at the 2022 CO2 Conference in Midland, Texas,
the Permian Basin headquarters city and home to 80 CO2 injection projects
The Clean Energy Movement is seeing enormous activity and funding at the Federal and State levels. What seems to be lacking thus far is incorporating the extensive data base and experience of the practiced energy talent. The CO2 Conference in Midland, Texas has made it their mission for 27 years to gather the know-how and case history experience in their forum designed to avoid wasteful practices and create more efficient field projects.
If you are reading this, you will know that the Carbon Capture and Geological Storage momentum has never been greater than it is today. A variety of incentives are in place now with the companies having industrial emissions and multi-million (even billion) dollar projects are being planned around the world. Concerns are emerging that the incentives and project drivers are the surface emissions; many of the surface capture projects have not carefully considered the storage reservoirs being targeted. The secure storage risks can be many. Some project teams are beginning to recognize the industry with the wealth of injection and subsurface reservoir experience are being ignored. Induced seismicity, lateral reservoir continuity, fluid transmissive fault characteristics are just three of the concerns many in the practiced community have about some of the proposed sites. It not commonly understood that new lessons on site risks have grown immensely just within the last decade with the experiences of the horizontal drilling industry.
While it is true that many subsurface reservoir sites are effectively risk free with long term CO2 secure storage, there are also many sites where a full consideration of the reservoir attributes will require early exclusion of a site. Who is to rank the site risks and avoid the poorly conceived projects? It will require broadly experienced geotechnical geoscientists and engineers. But broad experience is very difficult to find. The 2022 CO2 Conference will describe the risks, is seeking to gather the experts and rapidly fill the void in rankings for CO2 site security that currently exists.
