OR/16/029 Appendix 3 - Output from collaboration breakout discussion sessions

Pearce, J M, Akhurst, M C, Jones, D G, Vincent, C J and Booth, J H. 2016. Pathways from pilot to demonstration: How can research advance CO2 geological storage deployment? (Energy and Marine Geosciences Programme) British Geological Survey External Report, OR/16/029.

Deep monitoring and injection optimisation and other geo-energy resources

Potential topics for collaborative site-specific research

Breakout group 1A — Charles Jenkins and Jim White

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 1A: Geoff Baxter; Harald Brunstad; Carlos de Dios; Rachel Kilgallon; Alberto Pettinau; Shoujian Peng; Gemma Purser; Nino Ripepi; Tony Surridge; Mervyn Wright.

Key lessons

• Our discussion revealed a limited scope for collaboration on deep monitoring between the pilot projects unless data is made available across projects
• It was felt that the transfer of skills, as much as knowledge, would be the primary benefit.
• Pilots provide capacity building to take CCS forward

Where is CCS?

• CCS often follows a similar path to oil and gas. Where is our opportunity to take things forward in a mature industry
• Well leakage and very long term monitoring. Zone from reservoir to surface
• Deep monitoring will be there to satisfy regulatory systems — Containment and conformance
• Key is to identify how it can lead to commercial CCS, and mitigate against CO₂ emissions

Use of pilots — capacity building

• Gain experiences to ensure transition of technology to commercial deployment. Efficiency and safety
• So are pilots simply a training tool to help scientists/policy makers move to full-scale deployment?
• Evaluation method to assess the monitoring tools in hostile environment. Confidence builder? But same as oil and gas. But these can be shared
• Period of monitoring is longer than anything previously
• Increasing confidence of people in other parts of the chain

Collaboration on technology

• Transfer of novel techniques (e.g. pressure tomography, novel/quantum gravity sensors, DAS, fibre VSP, perm source) between sites
• All pilots have similar kits. BUT DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR. What lessons can be learnt. What can be shared to make conclusions applicable to the community
• What should be measured, and how does this satisfy regulatory requirements?
• What do shallow measurements tell us about deep ones? Can we join the gap? How are they linked to reservoir?
• Biofilms as a mitigation strategy

Collaborative themes

• Lessons learned demonstrating conformance to pre-injection plan
• Detectability thresholds for leakage. Collaborations between sites
• How to quantify leakage — small and catastrophic volumes?

Key points

• Sharing data — more data allows us to better understand
• Development of best practice approach

Breakout group 1B — Ceri Vincent and Ton Wildenborg

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 1B: Keith Bateman; Michelle Bentham; Thinus Cloete; Alv-Arne Grimstad; Alan James; Philip Ringrose; Tom Parker; Rolando di Primio; Max Watson; Jiang Xu.

Injection optimisation and cost reduction

• Plume monitoring and steering (sweep-efficiency management) with polymers and brine production

• Brine production which requires monitoring water quality (chemical content, temperature)
• Relationship between required injection volume and the architecture of the reservoir

• Near-well issues like salt precipitation, hydrate formation
• Operational instability caused by frequent starting up and shutting down due to varying CO₂ stream
• Use other compositions of the injected CO₂ stream with chemical and thermodynamic effects in the well and the reservoir
• Optimum characterisation of a well for upscaling in terms of future injectivity and storage efficiency
• Lack of data on CO₂-brine relative-permeabilities which are scale dependent
• Optimised injection has great potential for cost saving though increased storage efficiency and reduced number of wells required

Monitoring

• Fibre optics with a variety of sensors including VSP, leak detection, inflow into formation, heat pulse measurements making continuous injection (production) possible and has a cost reduction potential
• Chemical sensors, e.g. pH tracers, redox and salinity
• Make wells available for monitoring tool development and use of alternative cement materials
• Long-term monitoring techniques downhole (e.g. pH) and surface techniques for deep investigation, (e.g. gravity)
• Weighing up value/risk of more wells for monitoring

Upscaling from pilot to demo

• Appropriate scale of test at pilot scale should be meaningful for large injection volumes and large storage capacity
• Predicting pressure and temperature change in wellbore is very useful for larger-scale projects
• Instrumenting wells to be abandoned and available in other projects for future relocation and integrity test

Corrective measures

• Using polymers resistant to CO₂ in sealing off fracture zones
• Plume steering requires sufficiently deep well and pressure gradients to be effective
• Use of Ca(OH)₂ becoming reactive in the presence of wet CO₂
• Use of microbes for creating flow barriers (e.g. biofilms, siderite)
• Test bed for remediation methods or plume steering methods
• Also applicable to other industries, e.g. environmental remediation for chemical spills

Synergies with other georesources

• Re-inject CO₂ with recirculated fluids from geothermal energy production and provide pressure support
• Producing heat from brine production
• ¹⁴C source as a tracer
• Low-cost drilling
• See corrective measures

Shallow migration/leakage monitoring &remediation and other geo-energy resources onshore

Breakout group 2A — Dave Jones and Matt Hall

Shallow release — onshore

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 2A: Sabina Bigi; Gareth Johnson; Soon-Oh Kim; Don Lawton; Alberto Plaisant; Insun Song; Lee Spangler; Michela Vellico; Seong-Tak Yun; Qian Zhang.

• Primary benefit is to build confidence and social licence to operate
• Not the site specifically, but comparing different technologies into different places, difference geological conditions
• Mass balance/quantification question to instil confidence
• Portfolio of techniques for different scales

Comparability

• The need to report evidence in similar way
• Comparison between different facilities
• Resources and collaboration to publish more comparisons between projects in papers
• Sharing of project meta data on a website
• Archival, curation of data

Wider audience

• Sharing how you deal with risk management, social licence to operate
• Make sure leakage experiments are well managed, risks considered, public perceptions, wider impact on the geological storage community
• Rather than talking about risks, talk about safety cases
• Conceptual geological model — using similar terminology, describe features (e.g. coal, halite, fractured limestone) rather than using ages or stratigraphy (different members, formation names)

Fault experiments

• Potential sites for fault experiments:

– CO₂CRC

– Bongwana, SA

– Sulcis, Italy

• More in-depth studies, understanding processes at natural or injection experiment sites
• Fault that looks like this, expect this type of behaviour
• All sites open for collaboration
• Multiple models using the same data

Questions faults experiments

• Can experiment answer these questions:

– How much migration in the damage zone

– Natural attenuation in thief (high perm) zones?

– Rate of migration?

– How to you monitor migration?

– Predicting fault behaviour?

– Or have these already been answered?

• Could be applied in other geoenergy industries, mining
• Generic characterisation of fault zones to inform monitoring techniques

Funding

• High level agreements:

– UK and US (DoE, NSF)

• Early warning of tests to get funding in place
• A controlled releases calendar
• Support from different groups can help get funding
• Global experimental program of geological storage
• Combing lots of little projects into a larger global program
• Where can we invest in research overseas to get benefit to our country
• Minimum portfolio of techniques that would be deployed at a leaking site
• Who oversees the global experiment, e.g. IEA

Breakout group 2B — Kyle Worth and Andrew Feitz

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 2B: Maria Barrio; Zhenxing Fan; Jina Jeong; E Xiaochun Li; Enrico Maggio; Thulani Maupa; Paul Nathanail; Eungyu Park; Jonathan Pearce; Chris Rochelle.

• Build confidence
• Not the site specifically, but comparing different technologies into different places, difference geological conditions
• Mass balance/quantification question to instil confidence
• Quantify
• Broad-scale detection and flexibility
• Portfolio of techniques for different scales
• Social licence to operate, build public acceptance
• The need to report evidence in similar way
• Resources and collaboration to publish more comparisons between projects in papers
• Sharing of project meta data on a website
• Archival, curation of data
• Sharing how you deal with risk management, social licence to operate
• Make sure leakage experiments are well managed, risks considered, public perceptions, wider impact on the geological storage community
• Rather than talking about risks, talk about safety cases
• Better collaboration and coordination
• Potential sites for fault experiments

– CO₂CRC

– Bongwana, SA

– Sulcis, Italy

• More in depth studies, understanding processes at sites
• All sites open for collaboration
• Multiple models using the same data
• How experiment answer these questions:

– How much migration in the damage zone

– Natural attenuation in thief (high perm) zones?

– Rate of migration?

– How to you monitor migration?

– Predicting fault behaviour?

• Could be applied in other geo-energy industries, other mining
• Characterisation of fault zones, inform monitoring techniques
• High level agreements

– UK and US (DoE, NSF)

• Comparison between different facilities
• Fault that looks like this, expect this type of behaviour
• Conceptual geological model — using similar terminology, describe features (e.g. coal, halite, fractured limestone) rather than using ages or stratigraphy (different members, formation names)
• Early warning of tests to get funding in place
• A controlled releases calendar
• Support from different groups can help get funding
• Global experimental program of geological storage
• Combing lots of little projects into a larger global program
• Where can we invest in research overseas to get benefit to our country
• Minimum portfolio of techniques that would be deployed at a leaking site
• Who oversees the global experiment, e.g. IEA

Shallow migration/leakage monitoring & remediation and other geo-energy resources offshore

Breakout group 3A

Chairman: Jerry Blackford — PML

Rapporteur: Karen Kirk — BGS

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 3A: Maxine Akhurst; Max Bardwell; Bob Gatliff; Seong-Gil Kang; Zoe Kapetaki; Sverre Quale; Tony Ripley; Ryozo Tanaka; Liang Xi; Geraint West.

Research topics

• Marine environment

• Adequate baseline summary on a budget
• Assess risk and impact
• Most efficient way to detect a leak
• Quantification of that leak

• Geological

• Shallow characterisation
• Knowledge transfer onshore to offshore

Baselines

• Qualitative and quantitative comparison of different sites

• Carbonate Chemistry, pH, DIC etc.
• Stoichiometric relationship analysis — potentially more challenging in the marine environment than onshore — can we sufficiently define this? (need high frequency, local occurrences of high resolution data — which are very rare)

• Get together with data from existing projects to carry out a comparison of observations
• Initial activity — to compare observation programmes to maximise potential inter- comparison.

Who?

• STEMM — North Sea
• Tomakomai — Japan
• Ulleung — Korea
• Texas University — Gulf of Mexico
• CSIRO — Australia
• Guangdong — China

Monitoring

• How to monitor efficiently and effectively:

• AUV/RoV only if quiet;
• issues — battery life, amount of data being collected

• NB need to sift and extract the meaningful data (acoustics, pH measurements etc.)
• Relevant data is set by regulatory requirements
• Algorithms required to sift through data for the relevant data to make most efficient use of these units

• Algorithms are site specific
• Detectability may be better at times of year with low natural variability, but we need to consider operational issues such as not deploying in bad weather. There could be a trade-off.

How to monitor effectively, efficiently and cheaply — key challenge is to reduce the spatial extent of the survey

• Knowledge from offshore projects can inform array layout for shallow monitoring — would need to be mobile not static as don’t know where it will occur
• ability to carry out mobile monitoring has local constraints e.g.

• for example would be effected fishing in Japan, red crabs in Korea and oil and gas in North Sea

• Start with a synthesis of onshore and offshore in a paper — shallow geophysical flow pathways
• Several onshore sites that could be used to compare to QICS and similar offshore projects, possibly volcanic analogue sites

How small a leak do we need to quantify?

• Quantification of leak
• Only pick up fraction of leak as gas bubbles, can't easily detect dissolved phase
• Look at sediment and look at how much is likely to be retained and how much released as gas (%)
• Can pick bubbles up easily by sonar
• Sediment baseline
• How small would we measure?
• Could use a % of the amount stored to set the threshold

Targeted workshop If the collaborations suggested are successful we propose a targeted workshop in approx. 2-years-time to facilitate knowledge exchange.

Breakout group 3B

Chairman: Andy Chadwick

Rapporteur: Sue Horvorka

Workshop participants assigned to breakout group 3B: Jo Booth; Andreas Busch; Benjamin Court; James Craig; Tony Espie; Den Gammer; Jun Kita; Sanghoon Lee; Theo Mitchell; Ciara O'Connor.

Goals

• Monitoring cheaply real time
• Impacts of release
• Remediation
• Allegations/unknown un-attributed changes
• Long term post closure
• Intermediate zone — cap rocks and secondary reservoirs between reservoir and surface

Monitoring cheaply real time

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• ETI AUV in development
• Water sampling
• Bubbles
• Ecosystem
• Need for telemetry

• Which sites have right facilities?

• QICS (borehole, shallow water, public acceptance)
• Tomakomai
• STEMM-CCS (deeper water, injection tube)

• When could research be done?

• 0–5 years

• By whom?

Impacts of release

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Ecosystem response to injection related things
• Analogues (?)

• Which sites have right facilities?

• QICS
• STEMM-CCS

• When could research be done?

• Waiting for calls, Korea Japan China?

• By Whom?

Remediation

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Most needed remediation will be done in well at depth
• Which sites have right facilities
• Few
• Mont Terri (CCP) mitigation of damage

• When could research be done?
• By whom?

Attenuation during transport — how much of a leak would arrive at surface?

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Mass balance — injected (to simulate leakage from depth) vs escape to water column

• Could use onshore sites as process is similar

• Which sites have right facilities?

• QICS
• Onshore-Atmosphere: CMC, Otway, GERC
• ZERT, Ginninderra too shallow?

• When could research be done?

• Next Horizon 2020 call; current NERC

• By whom?

• Site owners
• Researchers

Allegations/unknown un-attributed changes

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Distinguish between ambient variability from changes created by leakage or other unwanted side effects of injection O₂/CO₂/N₂ ratios

• Which sites have right facilities?

• QICS
• Onshore-Atmosphere: CMC, Otway, GERC
• ZERT, Ginninderra, too shallow?
• North Sea reference sites STEMM CCS

• When could research be done
• By whom?

Long term post closure

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Post closure monitoring — do it?

• Which sites have right facilities?

• Nagaoka
• Ketzin
• Old EOR fields
• Natural analogues hydrocarbon and CO₂ fields

• When could research be done?
• By whom?

Intermediate zone — cap rocks and secondary reservoirs between reservoir and surface

• What could be done at experimental sites?

• Measurement and modelling
• Stimulation of faults via pressure
• Geochemical methods including tracers

• Which sites have right facilities?

• Rad waste sites fault and fracture network leakage (e.g. Mont Terri)
• Petroleum system as analogues

• When could research be done?
• By whom?