Improved Understanding of Regional Geologic CO₂ Storage Options through Collaboration with Oil and Gas Industry

Gupta, Neeraj ¹, Jagucki, Phil ¹, Sminchak, Joel ¹, and Byrer, Charles ²

¹Battelle, Columbus, Ohio

²National Energy Technology Laboratory, Morgantown, West Virginia

A “piggyback” exploration approach has been developed by Battelle to improve the geological understanding of deep sedimentary reservoirs that are candidates for CO₂ storage in the Ohio River Valley Region.  The approach hinges upon a mutually beneficial collaboration with oil industry for planned or ongoing exploration in the region to conduct additional drilling, rock coring, wireline logging, and analysis of seismic data to better characterize sedimentary zones that are generally not evaluated during typical exploratory drilling.  In addition to characterizing the extent and storage parameters for regional sandstones such as the Mt. Simon Sandstone and the Rose Run Sandstone, there is an emphasis on locating and characterizing the zones of primary or secondary permeability in the thick carbonate sequences present in the deeper basin areas.  Even laterally small zones of karst or secondary permeability in these carbonates can provide extremely large storage capacity and injectivity.  Two Rose Run/Copper Ridge wells and one Devonian Shale well in southeastern Ohio have been investigated.  Results from these wells were combined with the detailed information obtained from the AEP #1 well at Mountaineer Plant in West Virginia.  These three wells provide correlation of geology along the general strike in the study area and demonstrate the extent of regional continuity in the Rose Run Sandstone and a section of the Copper Ridge formation with very high permeability.  Future plans for the project include expanded effort in areas where there is a lack of information on deep storage reservoirs.  Ultimately the comprehensive assessment of the compiled data along with knowledge of the sedimentary history of the area can be used to develop models for depositional environments and improve predictability of sequestration targets in this region.  The results of these studies will help reduce the cost of CO₂ storage by minimizing the pipeline requirements, help locate new reservoirs, increase public confidence in storage capacity, help develop monitoring and verification technologies specific to the geologic setting, and help verify the storage potential in various target formations by validating current theoretical estimates with actual field geologic data.