Meeting the Challenge of Reducing Large-scale CO₂ Emissions: an Example of Potential Geological CO₂ Storage from the Gippsland Basin, Australia

Gibson-Poole, Catherine M.¹, Lotte Svendsen¹, James Underschultz², Maxwell N. Watson¹, Jonathan Ennis-King², Peter J. Van Ruth¹, Emma J. Nelson³, Richard F. Daniel¹, Yildiray Cinar⁴ (1) CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), South Australia, Australia (2) CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), Victoria, Australia (3) Adelaide Univerity, Adelaide, Australia (4) CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), Sydney, Australia

Geological storage of CO₂ in the offshore Gippsland Basin, Australia, is being investigated by the CO2CRC as a possible method for storing the very large volumes of CO₂ emissions from the nearby Latrobe Valley area. A storage capacity of about 50 million tonnes of CO₂ per year for a 40-year injection period is required, which will necessitate several individual storage sites to be used both sequentially and simultaneously, but timed such that existing hydrocarbon assets are not compromised. The potential injection targets are the interbedded sandstones of the Paleocene-Eocene upper Latrobe Group, regionally sealed by the Lakes Entrance Formation. The research identified several features to the offshore Gippsland Basin that make it particularly favourable for CO₂ storage. These include: a complex stratigraphic architecture that provides baffles which slow vertical migration and increase residual gas trapping; non-reactive reservoir units that have high injectivity; a thin, suitably reactive, lower permeability marginal reservoir just below the regional seal providing mineral trapping; several depleted oil fields that provide storage capacity coupled with a transient production-induced flow regime that enhances containment; and long migration pathways beneath a competent regional seal. This study has shown that the Gippsland Basin has sufficient capacity to store very large volumes of CO₂. It may provide a solution to the problem of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions from future coal developments in the Latrobe Valley.