Operational Protocols for Geological Carbon Storage and the Need for a New Hazard Characterization Approach

Friedmann, S. Julio¹ (1) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA

Large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage will require a new industrial operational base closely aligned to the oil and gas industry. Current uncertainty in evolving permitting, regulation, and public acceptance will limit investment, and CCS deployment would benefit from clearly defined operational practices and protocols. To be successful and relevant, protocols must be technically based and applicable to a wide range of geological settings and operating conditions. In this context, a scientific and technical program is required to underpin best practices and operational protocols and should focus on rapidly providing answers to the top-tier concerns of an operator, investor, regulator, or public stakeholder. The program goal should be to provide insight and constraints that will accelerate deployment of large-scale CCS in the US and lead to widely accepted CCS protocols and, ultimately, a regulatory framework.

Thankfully, the list of potential earth and atmospheric hazards that present substantial risk to CCS operations is ultimately short. Three fundamental hazards—atmospheric release, groundwater contamination, and crustal deformation—are associated with characteristic sets of potential injection-triggered processes (risk elements) that may alone or in combination result in hazard realization. For each hazard class, the prioritization hierarchy assigned reflects perception of relative importance, which has a significant component of site dependency; such prioritizations would likely be different for the Illinois basin, coastal Gulf of Mexico, or the Los Angeles Basin. Several risk components cut across hazard classes, most notably wells and faults; there are also components unique to a given hazard class (e.g. induced seismicity). In some cases, the technical information needed to constrain one risk element can be applied to different hazards. This kind of relationship will determine the nature of a best-practice recommendation.