Regional Assessments of Onshore and Offshore CO₂ Storage Potential for the MRCSP

Abstract

The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) was established by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to assess the public acceptance, technical and economic feasibility of the geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). This work fits into DOE’s larger effort to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) as an option for future investment in low-carbon energy. For many large CO2 point sources along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, significant potential for carbon storage lies in offshore geologic formations. Identifying prospective storage resources is a critical first step for deployment of advanced CO2 capture technologies. The project team performed a preliminary assessment of the carbon storage resources of the offshore Mid-Atlantic coastal region from the Georges Bank Basin (GBB) through the Long Island Platform to the southern Baltimore Canyon Trough (BCT). Existing data was used to answer questions about potential storage opportunities, including 44 deep exploratory wells and seismic surveys completed during the 1970s and 1980s. Risk factor assessment was performed to help establish preliminary, screening-level constraints on the available geologic storage resources. Regional-scale prospective CO2 storage resources were estimated for three potential deep saline storage zones using DOE-NETL’s volumetric method and CO2-SCREEN tool. Well data and simplified dynamic simulations were used to derive offshore-specific efficiency factors. Results of the regional analysis were used to delineate a selected area for refinement of storage resource estimates via dynamic injection and storage simulation. Simplified dynamic reservoir simulation performed for a selected offshore area suggests 45 to 51 megatonnes of CO2 could potentially be stored at the end of 30 years for the specific injection scenario (single injection well in one 51-meter (m)-thick reservoir interval within the target storage zone) and pressure constraints evaluated.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90350 © 2019 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, May 19-22, 2019