geological sequestration
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Between 2009 and 2012, Australia and China successfully completed the first phase of a bilateral project that aimed to build capacity in the area of geological storage of carbon dioxide among Chinese researchers, students, policy makers and professionals from academia, government and industry. This paper details the activities and results of the International CCS CAGS project, Phase I.
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Covering an area of approximately 247 000km2, the Galilee Basin is a significant feature of central Queensland. Three main depocentres contain several hundred metres of Late Carboniferous to Middle Triassic sediments. Sedimentation in the Galilee Basin was dominated by fluvial to lacustrine depositional systems. This resulted in a sequence of sandstones, mudstones, siltstones, coals and minor tuff in what was a relatively shallow intracratonic basin with little topographic relief. Forty years or more of exploration in the Galilee Basin has failed to discover any economic accumulations of hydrocarbons, despite the presence of apparently fair to very good reservoirs and seals in both the Permian and Triassic sequence. Despite some relatively large distances (upwards of 500km) between sources and sinks, previous and ongoing work on the Galilee Basin suggests that it has potential to sequester a significant amount of Queensland's carbon dioxide emissions. Potential reservoirs include the Early Permian Aramac Coal Measures, the Late Permian Colinlea Sandstone and the Middle Triassic Clematis Sandstone. These are sealed by several intraformational and local seals as well as the regional Triassic Moolayember Formation. With few suitable structural traps and little faulting throughout the Galilee sequence, residual trapping within saline reservoir is the most likely mechanism for storing CO2. The current study is aimed at building a sound geological model of the basin through activities such as detailed mapping, well correlation, and reservoir and seal analysis leading to reservoir simulations to gain a better understanding of the basin.
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The economics of the storage of CO2 in underground reservoirs in Australia have been analysed as part of the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre's GEODISC program. The analyses are based on cost estimates generated by a CO2 storage technical / economic model developed at the beginning of the GEODISC project. They also rely on data concerning the characteristics of geological reservoirs in Australia. The uncertainties involved in estimating the costs of such projects are discussed and the economics of storing CO2 for a range of CO2 sources and potential storage sites across Australia are presented. The key elements of the CO2 storage process and the methods involved in estimating the costs of CO2 storage are described and the CO2 storage costs for a hypothetical but representative storage project in Australia are derived. The effects of uncertainties inherent in estimating the costs of storing CO2 are shown. The analyses show that the costs are particularly sensitive to parameters such as the CO2 flow rate, the distance between the source and the storage site, the physical properties of the reservoir and the market prices of equipment and services. Therefore, variations in any one of these inputs can lead to significant variation in the costs of CO2 storage. Allowing for reasonable variations in all the inputs together in a Monte Carlo simulation of any particular site, then a large range of total CO2 storage costs is possible. The effect of uncertainty for the hypothetical representative storage site is illustrated. The impact of storing other gases together with CO2 is analysed. The other gases include methane, hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen, nitrous oxides and oxides of sulphur, all of which potentially could be captured together with CO2. The effect on storage costs when varying quantities of other gases are injected with the CO2 is shown. Based on the CO2 storage estimates and the published costs capturing CO2 from industrial processes, the econ
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Questions often asked by the public in regard to the concept of CO2 storage include; "But won?t it leak?", and "How long will it stay down there?". The natural environment of petroleum systems documents many of the processes which will influence CO2 storage outcomes, and the likely long (geological) timeframes that will operate. Thousand of billions of barrels of hydrocarbons have been trapped and stored in geological formations in sedimentary basins for 10s to 100s of millions of years, as has substantial volumes of CO2 that has been generated through natural processes. Examples from Australia and major hydrocarbon provinces of the world are documented, including those basins with major accumulations that are currently trapped in their primary reservoir, those that have accumulated hydrocarbons in the primary reservoir and then through tectonic activity spilled them to other secondary traps or released the hydrocarbons to the atmosphere, and those that generated hydrocarbons but for which no effective traps were in place for hydrocarbons to accumulate. Some theoretical modelling of the likelihood of meeting stabilisation targets using geological storage are based on leakage rates which are implausibly high when compared to observations from viable storage locations in the natural environment, and do not necessarily account for the likelihood of delay times for leakage to the atmosphere or the timeframe in which geological events will occur. Without appropriate caveats, they potentially place at risk the public perception of how efficient and effective appropriately selected geological reservoirs could be for storage of CO2. If the same rigorous methods, technology and skills that are used to explore for, find and produce hydrocarbon accumulations are now used for finding safe and secure storage sites for CO2, the traps so identified can be expected to contain the CO2 after injection for similar periods of time as that in which hydrocarbons and CO2 have been stored in the natural environment.
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This paper briefly summaries how intrinsic uncertainties in reservoir characterization, at the proposed Otway Basin Naylor Field carbon-dioxide geo-sequestration site, were risk managed by a process of creation and evaluation of a series of geo-models (term to describe the geo-cellular geological models created by PETREL software) that cover the range of plausible geological possibilities, as well as extreme case scenarios. Optimization methods were employed, to minimize simulation run time, whilst not compromising the essential features of the basic geo-model. For four different Cases, 7 geo-models of the reservoir were created for simulation studies. The reservoir simulation study relies primarily on production history matching and makes use of all available information to help screen and assess the various geo-models. The results suggest that the bulk reservoir permeability is between 0.5 - 1Darcy, the original gas-water-contact was about 2020 mSS and there is a strong aquifer drive.
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Identification of major hydrocarbon provinces from existing world assessments for hydrocarbon potential can be used to identify those sedimentary basins at a global level that will be highly prospective for CO2 storage. Most sedimentary basins which are minor petroleum provinces and many non-petroliferous sedimentary basins will also be prospective for CO2 storage. Accurate storage potential estimates will require that each basin be assessed individually, but many of the prospective basins may have ranges from high to low prospectivity. The degree to which geological storage of CO2 will be implemented in the future will depend on the geographical and technical relationships between emission sites and storage locations, and the economic drivers that affect the implementation for each source to sink match. CO2 storage potential is a naturally occurring resource, and like any other natural resource there will be a need to provide regional access to the better sites if the full potential of the technology is to be realized. Whilst some regions of the world have a paucity of opportunities in their immediate geographic confines, others are well endowed. Some areas whilst having good storage potential in their local region may be challenged by the enormous volume of CO2 emissions that are locally generated. Hubs which centralize the collection and transport of CO2 in a region could encourage the building of longer and larger pipelines to larger and technically more viable storage sites and so reduce costs due to economies of scale.
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Many industries and researchers have been examining ways of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions. No single method is likely to be a panacea, however some options do show considerable promise. Geological sequestration is one option that utilises mature technology and has the potential to sequester large volumes of CO2. In Australia geological sequestration has been the subject of research for the last 2? years within the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre's GEODISC program. A portfolio of potential geological sequestration sites (?sinks?) has been identified across all sedimentary basins in Australia, and these have been compared with nearby known or potential CO2 emission sources. These sources have been identified by incorporating detailed analysis of the national greenhouse gas emission databases with other publicly available data, a process that resulted in recognition of eight regional emission nodes. An earlier generic economic model for geological sequestration in Australia has been updated to accommodate the changes arising from this process of ?source to sink? matching. Preliminary findings have established the relative attractiveness of potential injection sites through a ranking approach. It includes the ability to accommodate the volumes of sequesterable greenhouse gas emissions predicted for the adjacent region, the costs involved in transport, sequestration and ongoing operations, and a variety of technical geological risks. Some nodes with high volumes of emissions and low sequestration costs clearly appear to be suitable, whilst others with technical and economic issues appear to be problematic. This assessment may require further refinement once findings are completed from the GEODISC site-specific research currently underway.
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In July 2010 Geoscience Australia and CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research jointly commissioned a new atmospheric composition monitoring station (' Arcturus') in central Queensland. The facility is designed as a proto-type remotely operated `baseline monitoring station' such as could be deployed in areas that are likely targets for commercial scale carbon capture and geological storage (CCS). It is envisaged that such a station could act as a high quality reference point for later in-fill, site based, atmospheric monitoring associated with geological storage of CO2. The station uses two wavelength scanned cavity ringdown instruments to measure concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), water vapour and the isotopic signature (?13C) of CO2. Meteorological parameters such as wind speed and wind direction are also measured. In combination with CSIRO's TAPM (The Air Pollution Model), data will be used to understand the local variations in CO2 and CH4 and the contributions of natural and anthropogenic sources in the area to this variability. The site is located in a region that supports cropping, grazing, cattle feedlotting, coal mining and gas production activities, which may be associated with fluxes of CO2 and CH4. We present in this paper some of the challenges found during the installation and operation of the station in a remote, sub-tropical environment and how these were resolved. We will also present the first results from the site coupled with preliminary modelling of the relative contribution of large point source anthropogenic emissions and their contribution to the background.
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