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Center for Energy & Economic Development (CEED)

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WEBSITES

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SWP

 

Cost

Approximate Total Project Value $5,500,000

DOE/Non-DOE Share $4,400,000 /$1,100,000

Permian Basin - SACROC/Claytonville Pilot

 

Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration — Deployment Phase

 

Background

 

As part of a comprehensive effort to assess options for sustainable energy systems, the U.S. Department of Energy has selected seven Regional Partnerships, through its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) Program, to determine the best approaches for capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas which can contribute to global climate change. The RCSPs are made up of state agencies, universities, private companies, national laboratories, and nonprofit organizations that form the core of a nationwide network helping to establish the most suitable technologies, regulations, and infrastructure needs for carbon sequestration. Altogether, the Partnerships include more than 350 organizations, spanning 41 states, two Indian nations, and four Canadian provinces.

 

The Regional Partnership initiative is being implemented in three phases. The Characterization Phase began in September 2003 with the seven Partnerships working to develop the necessary framework to validate and potentially deploy carbon sequestration technologies. In June 2005, work transitioned to the Validation Phase, a four-year effort focused on validating promising CO2 sequestration opportunities through a series of field tests in the seven regions. Presently, activities in the Deployment Phase (2008-2017) are proceeding as an extension of the work completed to date and will demonstrate that CO2 capture, transportation, injection, and storage can be achieved safely, permanently, and economically at a large scale. These tests will promote understanding of injectivity, capacity, and storability of CO2 in the various geologic formations identified by the Partnerships. Results and assessments from these efforts will assist commercialization efforts for future sequestration projects in North America.

 

The Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration (SWP) includes the states of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. The SWP includes over 50 organizations. The eight states in the Southwest Regional Partnership account for about 10 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions from stationary sources. The region offers significant potential for sequestration in saline formations, unmineable coal seams, and depleting oil and gas reservoirs. Of particular interest is the use of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in tandem with sequestration.

 

Project Description

 

Project Summary

SWP will accomplish a major sequestration deployment and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the Permina Basin near Snyder, Texas. This test will follow an injection schedule over 3 - 5 years, leading up to 300,000 tonnes (330,700 million U.S. tons) of CO2 per year. The target formations for this deployment are the hydrocarbon producing Cisco and Canyon formations. Pennsylvanian-age formations such as these are also targets of potential commercial sequestration throughout the western United States. Given the historical success of EOR in this and other southern U.S. basins, our primary research objective of the EOR-sequestration test is to evaluate and maximize efficacy of CO2 subsurface monitoring technologies, and to improve our ability to track the fate of injected CO2 and to calculate ultimate storage capacity.

   

Injection Site Description

The SACROC EOR-sequestration injection site is located near Snyder, Texas in the Permina Basin. The SACROC Unit in the Texas Permian Basin is the oldest CO2-EOR operation in the United States.

 

The SACROC oil field unit, the main part of the Kelly-Snyder field, lies along a trend of fields described by Galloway et al. (1983) as the Horseshoe Atoll Play (Figure 1). Hydrocarbons are produced from Pennsylvanian-age strata, including the Cisco and Canyon formations, which represent an isolated platform depositional environment (Figure 2). The Cisco and Canyon formations are carbonates that vary in observed facies, including interbedded pellet, crinoid, algal, and intraclast grainstones and boundstones.

 

Description of Geology

The geology of the injection zone is comparable to a large class of potential brine storage reservoirs. Depth of the flooded zones range from ~6300–7100 ft (1900–2200 m) with average reservoir pressures of ~2600 psig. The Wolfcamp shale is extremely low permeability, but the reservoir units approach 10s of millidarcies with porosity ranging from ~2 to ~15%. The oil residing in the field is of high quality. Some free gas was most likely released into the reservoir during initial production, as inferred by increasing producing gas-oil ratios. Pore types include vugs, interparticle, intercrystalline, and fractures. Because the relationship between porosity and permeability is dependent on the pore type, it can be quite variable. Although storage and flow capacity is low, the reservoir has been interpreted to be in fairly good vertical and horizontal communication, based on the consistency of bottom-hole pressure measurements. In sum, the target reservoir physical properties and character of its oil make the Pennsylvanian carbonates (Figure 2) a good candidate for CO2 enhanced oil recovery as well as concomitant storage of CO2. Good injectivity is also observed by the field operator, and elucidation of potential injectivity reduction following CO2 injection is among SWP goals.

 

Source of CO2

Injection at SACROC is ongoing, as it has been for over 30 years. KinderMorgan has a well-developed CO2 handling infrastructure, with about 1850 wells within the 50,000 acre site. KinderMorgan generously agreed to provide all CO2 for the EOR/sequestration analysis at SACROC and Claytonville. The CO2 at SACROC is sourced from the McElmo Dome.

 

Simulation and Monitoring of CO2

The project will require extensive monitoring and simulation to determine if the storage operations are effective in trapping the injected CO2 for millennia.  Vertical seismic profiling and microgravity methods will be particularly utilized, given their proven ability to resolve the size of the CO2 plume.  Monitoring, mitigation, and verification (MMV) techniques that will be used include repeat 3-D seismic surveys, pressure monitoring, groundwater chemistry monitoring, pressure and fluid sample monitoring from other locations, soil gas sampling, and other methods.  A variety of “in house” and commercial/public simulation tools will be used, including GEM, TOUGH2, TOUGHREACT, FEHM, CO2-PENS, COMSOL, THRUST3D, MRKEOS and SWEOS.

 

 

Goals and Objectives

 

SWP’s overall goal is to validate the information and technology developed under the Characterization and Validation Phases relative to research and field activities, public outreach efforts, and regional characterization.  Specific objectives include:

·       Develop an overall methodology that optimizes engineering and planning for future commercial-scale sequestration projects

·       Conduct successful large-scale CO2 injection projects targeted at Jurassic and older sandstone formations

·       Achieve a more thorough understanding of the science, technology, regulatory framework, risk factors, and public opinion issues associated with large-scale injection operations

·       Validate MMV activities, modeling, and equipment operations.

·       Refine capacity estimates of the target formation using results of the tests

 

Benefits to the Region

 

The SACROC pilot will be an initial high resolution analysis of the potential for CO2 storage in the broader carbonate "Horseshoe Atoll" system, a huge (area and volume) system with potentially enormous CO2 capacity. Given that most of the western side of the atoll is below the oil-water contact, it is particularly appealing ofr large-scale sequestration, as suggested by our Phase I analysis of the region. The SACROC field is also representative of many oil/gas fields throughout the southwestern U.S., and results will be applicable to many such fields. Typically, EOR with CO2 is carried out with an objective to maximize re-production and recycling of CO2 for further EOR. Among the SWP goals is to maximize sequestration, or leaving CO2 in the ground rather than recycling, while not compromosing the efficacy of EOR.