Off-shore Geologic Carbon Sequestration in the Gulf of Mexico (GoMCarb)
Risk assessment of well leakage and investigation of sea-floor distributed acoustic sensing of off-shore geologic carbon sequestration in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)
LBNL is working with the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) and other partners in the Gulf of Mexico Partnership for Offshore Carbon Storage (GoMCarb) aimed at ensuring safe, long-term, and economically viable offshore storage of carbon in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region.
The GoMCarb partnership compiles data and expertise in the GoM region, integrating academic research institutions, government entities, and industry affiliates to address knowledge gaps, regulatory issues, infrastructure requirements, and geologic and engineering technical challenges involved in offshore geologic carbon sequestration (GCS). The goal of the GoMCarb is to develop a regional network involving GCS in Miocene sands under the near-off-shore regions of the GoM.
LBNL contributes to GoMCarb Task 3: Risk Assessment, Simulation, Modeling, and Task 4: Monitoring, Verification, Assessment. LBNL activities in Task 3 include modeling of well-leakage scenarios and CO2 migration and trapping in heterogeneous formations. The site-specific geological model with detailed characterization data is provided to LBNL by the GoMCarb partnership. A novel dual-continuum modeling approach is used to account for CO2 migration and trapping in the highly heterogeneous formations. A coupled well-reservoir modeling approach is used to simulate scenarios of well leakage and identify reservoir properties favorable to limiting sustained leakage through wells. These two activities will provide risk assessment of well leakage in realistic GoM settings.
LBNL activities in Task 4 include investigating use of sea-floor Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) to inform leakage monitoring and risk assessment. DAS can be used as a dense seismic array to examine near-offshore faults, and to continuously record natural earthquakes, induced seismicity, oceanic wave and marine dynamics, and noise from relevant processes, such as bubble emissions, at unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution.
Please visit the UT/BEG project website HERE.
Coupled well-reservoir-water column modeling with T2Well and TAMOC showed that CO2 emitted at the sea floor during large blowouts is readily absorbed by sea water especially in ocean depths larger than 50 m.