A Global Review of the Status in Large Scale CCS Demonstration Projects - Storage

Whittaker, Steve
Global CCS Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

After three years of monitoring and reporting annual global progress in CCS by the Global CCS Institute, trends are emerging relating to CCS storage. A levelling in the number of large scale integrated projects (LSIP's) in the asset lifecycle "pipeline", reducing from 85 to 77 to 74 as of the time of writing.

As of late 2011, there are eight operating integrated projects, with two more projects scheduled to start operating in 2012 and six having reached a final investment decision. Another 11 projects responded that they would be ready for FID by late 2012. Of the operating projects, only the Century natural gas processing project commenced operation after 2008 and an estimated net 33 MT CO2 is presently stored annually by all projects.

Storage assessment from screening to first injection is likely to be a rate determining step for many integrated projects. Early operating projects are being managed on whole or part by oil companies, which have many decades of experience in high risk environments and understanding the trade-offs between exploration investment and project success.

Funding profiles for storage assessment differ from that of the capture components as significant funding for data acquisition is required early in the project, often when other project components are still at a desktop or early prefeasibility stage.

The recent period of austerity compounded with increased cost estimates and limited options for additional resourcing have seen several projects deferred. One area of exception is CO2EOR where high oil prices plus some incentives for domestic production are creating widespread interest CO2EOR as a way of abating CO2. CO2EOR dominates the US CCS LSIPS but there is growing interest in the Middle East, Europe, China and producing Asian nations.

CO2EOR can contribute to progressing CCS deployment as it provides a natural laboratory for CO2 injection but is not universally applicable, requires significant changes in operational practice as well as regulatory, legal and infrastructure frameworks for a substantial increases in CO2 injection volume.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90155©2012 AAPG International Conference & Exhibition, Singapore, 16-19 September 2012