In mid 2011, the Australian Government announced funding of a new four year National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to accelerate the identification and development of sites suitable for the long term storage of CO2 in Australia that are within reasonable distances of major energy and industrial CO2 emission sources. The NCIP program promotes pre-competitive storage exploration and provides a basis for the development of transport and storage infrastructure. The Plan follows on from recommendations of the Carbon Storage Taskforce and the National CCS Council (formerly, the National Low Emissions Coal Council). It builds on the work funded under the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative and the need for adequate storage to be identified as a national priority. Geoscience Australia is providing strategic advice in delivering the plan and will lead in the acquisition of pre-competitive data and geological studies to assess storage potential. Four offshore sedimentary basins (Bonaparte, Browse, Perth and Gippsland basins) and several onshore basins have been identified for pre-competitive data acquisition and study.

In the 2011/12 Budget, the Australian Government announced funding of a four year National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to accelerate the identification and development of suitable long term CO2 storage sites, within reasonable distances of major energy and industrial emission sources. The NCIP funding follows on from funding announced earlier in 2011 from the Carbon Storage Taskforce through the National Carbon Mapping and Infrastructure Plan and previous funding recommended by the former National Low Emissions Coal Council. Four offshore sedimentary basins and several onshore basins have been identified for study and pre-competitive data acquisition.

Geoscience Australia and CO2CRC have constructed a greenhouse gas controlled release facility to simulate surface emissions of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) from the soil into the atmosphere under controlled conditions. The facility is located at an experimental agricultural station maintained by CSIRO Plant Industry at Ginninderra, Canberra. The design of the facility is modelled on the ZERT controlled release facility in Montana. The facility is equipped with a 2.5 tonne liquid CO2 storage vessel, vaporiser and mass flow controller unit with a capacity for 6 individual metered CO2 gas streams (up to 600 kg/d capacity in total). Injection of CO2 into the soil is via a 120m long slotted HDPE pipe installed horizontally 2m underground. This is equipped with a packer system to partition the well into six CO2 injection chambers. The site is characterised by the presence of deep red and yellow podsolic soils with the subsoil containing mainly kaolinite and subdominant illite. Injection is above the water table. The choice of well orientation based upon the effects of various factors such as topography, wind direction, soil properties and ground water depth will be discussed. An above ground release experiment was conducted from July - October 2010 leading to the development of an atmospheric tomography technique for quantifying and locating CO2 emissions1. An overview of monitoring experiments conducted during the first subsurface release (January-March 2012), including application of the atmospheric tomography technique, soil flux surveys, microbiological surveys, and tracer studies, will be presented. Additional CO2 release experiments are planned for late 2012 and 2013. Poster presented at 11th Annual Conference on Carbon Capture Utilization & Sequestration, April 30 - May 3, 2012, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The CO2CRC Otway Project is Australia's first demonstration of geological storage of CO2 within deep underground reservoirs. The project has undergone many phases of implementation and the latest work program, Phase 2C, is aimed at injecting between 10,000 and 30,000 tonnes of CO2 into the saline Paraatte Formation located around 1,400m below surface. One of the key measures of success for Phase 2C is successful seismic detection of the injected gas stream. The geophysics team from Curtin University of Technology have previously conducted three 3D surface seismic surveys, and numerous smaller experiments, at the Otway CO2 re-injection site. These tests were completed during Phase 1 of the Otway Project whereby an (80-20%) CO2-CH4 gas mixture was re-injected into the depleted Warre-C gas reservoir. The feasibility of seismic monitoring of the CO2-CH4 gas mixture injected into the Paraatte Formation is expected to be improved over the Warre-C reservoir due to the increased fluid property contrast between brine and the CO2-CH4 mixture and the shallower depth of the reservoir. A comprehensive desktop feasibility study has been completed by the Curtin/CSIRO geophysics team to assess the probability of successful seismic detection and the preliminary results are encouraging. A Seismic Assurance Review workshop was completed incorporating seismic expertise from both academia and industry to assess the risk of unsuccessful seismic detection. The workshop was held on the 3rd and 4th of November, 2011, at Curtin University of Technology.

High-CO2 gas fields serve as important analogues for understanding various processes related to CO2 injection and storage. The chemical signatures, both within the fluids and the solid phases, are especially useful for elucidating preferred gas migration pathways and also for assessing the relative importance of mineral dissolution and/or solution trapping efficiency. In this paper, we present a high resolution study focused on the Gorgon gas field and associated Rankin trend gases on Australia's Northwest Shelf of Australia. The gas data we present here display correlate-able trends for mole %-CO2 and %C CO2 both areally and vertically. Generally, CO2 % decreases and becomes depleted in %C (lighter) upsection and towards the north; a trend which also holds true for the greater Rankin trend gases in general. The strong spatial variation of CO2 content and %C and the interrelationship between the two suggests that processes were active to alter the two in tandem. We propose that these variations were driven by the precipitation of a carbonate phase, namely siderite, which is observed as a common late stage mineral. This conclusion is based on Rayleigh distillation modeling together with bulk rock isotopic analyses of core, which confirms that CO2 in gases are genetically related to the late stage carbonate cements. The results from this study have important implications for carbon storage operations and suggest that significant CO2 may be reacted out a gas plume over short migration distances.

Abstract for submission to 11th IEA GHG International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies. Conference paper to follow pending selection for oral or poster presentation. Abstract covers the GA-ACCA21 China Australia Geological Storage of CO2 (CAGS) Project run through PMD/ED 2009-2012.

Groundwater has been sampled from 21 shallow (Port Campbell Limestone) and 3 deep (Dilwyn Formation) groundwater bores within a radius of 10 km around well CRC-1 between June 2006 and March 2008. The objectives of the study are (1) to establish baseline aquifer conditions prior to CO2 injection at CRC-1, which started in April 2008, and (2) to enable detection monitoring for CO2 leakage, should any occur in the future. In addition to sampling, standing water levels have been monitored continuously in 6 of the bores using barometric loggers. The water samples were analysed for pH, electrical conductivity (EC), temperature (T), dissolved oxygen (DO), redox potential (Eh), reduced iron (Fe2+) and alkalinity (dissolved inorganic carbon, DIC, as HCO3-) in the field, and for a suite of major, minor and trace inorganic species in the laboratory. Stable isotopes of O and H in water, of S in sulfate and of C and O in DIC were also determined. The shallow groundwaters have compositions typical of carbonate aquifer hosted waters, being fresh (EC 800-4000 uS/cm), dominated by Ca, Na, HCO3- and Cl-, cool (T 12-23°C), and near-neutral (pH 6.6-7.5). Most deep groundwater samples are similarly fresh or fresher (EC 400-1600 uS/cm), also dominated by Ca, Na, HCO3- and Cl-, cool (T 15-21°C), but are more alkaline (pH 7.5-9.5). Time-series reveal that parameters measured have been relatively stable over the sampling period, although some shallow bores display increasing EC and T, some show decreasing then increasing alkalinity while others show steadily increasing alkalinity (with or without increasing Cl- and Na, and decreasing Ca). Alkalinity of the deep groundwater tends to decrease slightly over the period. Groundwater levels in some of the shallow bores show a seasonal variation with longer term trends evident in both aquifers.

The Australian Government, through the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, has supported Geoscience Australia in undertaking a series of regional-scale, geological studies to assess the CO2 storage potential of sedimentary basins, including the Petrel Sub-basin. The studies form part of the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative designed to accelerate the development of CO2 transport and storage infrastructure near the sources of major energy and industrial emissions. The Petrel Sub-basin was identified as a high-priority region for a future pre-competitive work program by the national Carbon Storage Taskforce. The Carbon Storage Taskforce also recommended the release of greenhouse gas assessment permits, which were released within the Petrel Sub-basin in 2009. As a component of the studies at Geoscience Australia, the numerical simulation was hypothetically designed to dynamically model the reservoir behavior and CO2 migration during the injection and post-injection stages using an in-house built 3D geological model of a represented injection site. 14 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of CO2 was injected into the lower Frigate/Elang/Plover reservoir over 30 years and CO2 plume migration was simulated up to 2,000 years from the initial injection. The injection rate of 14 MTPA of CO2 used in this study was based on the predicted 2020 CO2 emissions of the Darwin Hub, a figure defined by the Carbon Storage Taskforce (2009). The poster highlights the simulation results including CO2 plume migration distance, CO2 trapping mechanisms and reservoir pressure behavior.

The critical success factors which control hydrocarbon prospectivity in the Otway Basin have been investigated using petroleum systems approaches. Greater than 99% of the hydrocarbon inventory within the Victorian Otway Basin has been sourced from Austral 2 (Albian-Aptian) source rocks and these accumulations are typically located either within, or within approximately 3,000 m of source rock kitchens which are at peak thermal maturity at present day. Importantly, the zones of greatest prospectivity are located where these source rocks have been actively generating and expelling hydrocarbons throughout the Late Tertiary, primarily as a result of sediment loading associated with progradation of the Heytesbury shelfal carbonates. This peak generation window occurs at an average depth of approximately 2,500-3,500 m 'sub-mud' across much of the basin, which has allowed prospective hydrocarbon fairways to be mapped out, thereby highlighting areas of greatest prospectivity. It is believed that the spatial proximity of the actively generating source rocks to the accumulations is due to several factors, which includes overall poor fault seal in the basin (success cases occur where charge rate exceeds leakage rate) and relatively complex and tortuous migration fairways (which means that large volumes of hydrocarbons are only focussed and migrate for relatively short distances). etc

The middle to lower Jurassic sequence in Australia's Surat Basin has been identified as a potential reservoir system for geological CO2 storage. The sequence comprises three major formations with distinctly different mineral compositions, and generally low salinity formation water (TDS<3000 mg/L). Differing geochemical responses between the formations are expected during geological CO2 storage. However, given the prevailing use of saline reservoirs in CCS projects elsewhere, limited data are available on CO2-water-rock dynamics during CO2 storage in such low-salinity formations. Here, a combined batch experiment and numerical modelling approach is used to characterise reaction pathways and to identify geochemical tracers of CO2 migration in the low-salinity Jurassic sandstone units. Reservoir system mineralogy was characterized for 66 core samples from stratigraphic well GSQ Chinchilla 4, and six representative samples were reacted with synthetic formation water and high-purity CO2 for up to 27 days at a range of pressures. Low formation water salinity, temperature, and mineralization yield high solubility trapping capacity (1.18 mol/L at 45°C, 100 bar), while the paucity of divalent cations in groundwater and the silicate reservoir matrix results in very low mineral trapping capacity under storage conditions. Formation water alkalinity buffers pH at elevated CO2 pressures and exerts control on mineral dissolution rates. Non-radiogenic, regional groundwater-like 87Sr/86Sr values (0.7048-0.7066) indicate carbonate and authigenic clay dissolution as the primary reaction pathways regulating solution composition, with limited dissolution of the clastic matrix during the incubations. Several geochemical tracers are mobilised in concentrations greater than found in regional groundwater, most notably cobalt, concentrations of which are significantly elevated regardless of CO2 pressure or sample mineralogy.