--> Leveraging a Legacy Sample and Data Collection for Carbon Storage Resource Assessment

AAPG ACE 2018

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Leveraging a Legacy Sample and Data Collection for Carbon Storage Resource Assessment

Abstract

The Delaware Geological Survey’s U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf Sample and Data Repository holds all the remaining core and cuttings samples from the 5 COST and 46 industry wells drilled on the U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) between 1975 and 1984. The collection also includes prepared materials, biostratigraphic slides and thin sections as well as related data including paper and digitized geophysical logs. These invaluable materials are available to government agencies, consultants, industry and academia for studies of OCS geology.

The OCS repository holdings are a key resource for the Mid Atlantic U.S. Offshore Carbon Storage Resource Assessment Project, a multi-institution study of the Atlantic OCS supported by the Department of Energy (Award Number DE-FE0026087). Delaware Geological Survey has compiled a detailed item-by-item inventory of sample holdings and legacy sample data from the 51 OCS wells. The inventory includes around 10,000 unwashed cuttings, 88,000 washed cuttings, 61,900 slides (including 5,600 thin sections), 25,900 vials, 50 core peels, 2,470 linear feet of slabbed core, 200 core slices, 2,000 core chips, and 270 sidewall cores. These samples are being used by project partners for geological characterization of the Baltimore Canyon Trough and Georges Bank Basin, including hydrologic properties of formations of interest, reassessment of biostratigraphic data, and calibration of geophysical logs, among other applications.

A collaborative data mining effort by the project team extracted porosity, permeability and grain density data, among other parameters, from numerous publications and unpublished company reports, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s. The data were analyzed for gaps in coverage and compared to the sample inventory using relational database queries so that samples available in the gaps could be identified for new analysis. Legacy data were also matched to available samples where verification would be beneficial, notably where recorded values are anomalously high or otherwise suspect. Samples that would improve the calibration of well logs to rock properties were also identified. Integration of new analyses with project seismic, well-log, and sequence stratigraphic characterization work, leveraging these legacy samples, will improve understanding of the reservoir properties of units that are potential targets for carbon storage and contribute to increased understanding of the geology of the Atlantic OCS.