--> Carbon Storage and Static Earth Model Development for Pennsylvanian Cyclic Carbonates of Southwestern Nebraska

47th Annual AAPG-SPE Eastern Section Joint Meeting

Datapages, Inc.Print this page

Carbon Storage and Static Earth Model Development for Pennsylvanian Cyclic Carbonates of Southwestern Nebraska

Abstract

The Pennsylvanian Lansing – Kansas City (LKC) Group constitutes a regional succession of interbedded carbonates and shales. Located within the Cambridge Arch of Nebraska, these interbedded units were evaluated for carbon storage potential. Understanding the occurrence of carbonate porosity among the confining shale units in the LKC Group is key for developing a CO2 storage strategy for the Integrated Midcontinent Stacked Carbon Storage (IMSCS) Hub Project as part of DOE-NETL’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative. This project seeks to develop a regional carbon storage hub where captured carbon would be piped to existing oilfields for carbon storage and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Petrophysical analysis of wireline logs from 205 wells was used for reservoir characterization and building a static earth model (SEM) for Sleepy Hollow Field in Red Willow County, southwest Nebraska. Existing core samples from Sleepy Hollow and neighboring oilfields were studied and show that porosity occurs in packstone and grainstone units with further porosity development likely associated with meteoric water infiltration during periods of subaerial exposure. Gamma ray (GR) log response clearly indicated the depositional cyclicity and was employed in SEM facies development to delineate high, moderate, and low-energy environments using GR-thresholds. Storage resource estimates were based on the resulting porosity model while considering CO2 storage opportunities in saline zones vertically-stacked with potential EOR reservoirs in oil-bearing carbonate intervals. This presentation will provide an overview of the Phase 1 SEM development which is applicable to future commercial stacked storage sites along the Cambridge Arch and the Central Kansas Uplift. CarbonSafe Nebraska is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy-National Energy Technology Laboratory Agreement No. DE-FE0029264