Evaluation of Carbon Dioxide Sequestration and Enhanced Oil Recovery in the Jacksonburg-Stringtown Oilfields, West Virginia

Abstract

Geological carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is a potential approach to significantly reduce CO₂ emission to the atmosphere. Among several options of CCUS, injection of CO₂ into oil and gas reservoirs coupled with enhanced oil recovery (EOR), is a viable near-term method with potential economic benefit. The Jacksonburg-Stringtown oilfield is located in the Ohio River valley of northwest West Virginia in the vicinity of numerous large coal-fired power plants. Storage capacity and oil recovery factors are key for the evaluation of coupled CO₂ storage and CO₂-EOR processes, which can be quantified with a sequestration coefficient and recovery factor. Despite CO₂ displacement and break-through in the oil reservoir, significant CO₂ is dissolved in residual oil and water in pore scale. Traditional petroleum engineering methods are used to estimate storage through CO₂ solubility in oil and water. A static 3D reservoir model was constructed in order to estimate theoretical CO₂ sequestration capacity of between 24 to 383 million metric tons (mmt). A component fluid-flow model based on static 3D reservoir model was applied to determine EOR recovery factor, during which several factors are evaluated, including viscous fingering, area sweep efficiency, vertical heterogeneity efficiency, gravity segregation efficiency and gas breakthrough time. Finally, the effective CO₂ storage capacity is calculated with the aid of sequestration coefficient. The estimation results of CO₂ sequestration and EOR potential indicate that the Jacksonburg-Stringtown oilfield has significant potential for CO₂ storage and value-added EOR.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90259 ©2016 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June 19-22, 2016