Browsing by Subject "2006 UIC Conference of the Groundwater Protection Council"
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Item Assessing impacts to groundwater from CO2-flooding of SACROC and Claytonville oil fields in West Texas(2006) Smyth, Rebecca C.; Holtz, Mark H.; Guillot, Stephen N.Comparison of groundwater above two Permian Basin oil fields (SACROC Unit and Claytonville Field) near Snyder, Texas should allow us to assess potential impacts of 30 years of CO2-injection. CO2-flooding for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been active at SACROC in Scurry County since 1972. Approximately 13.5 million tons per year (MtCO2/yr) are injected with withdrawal/recycling amounting to ~7MtCO2/yr. It is estimated that the site has accumulated more than 55MtCO2; however, no rigorous investigation of overlying groundwater has demonstrated that CO2 is trapped in the subsurface. Mineralogy of reservoir rocks at the Claytonville field in southwestern Fisher County is similar to SACROC. CO2-EOR is scheduled to begin at Claytonville Field in Fisher County in early 2007. Here we have the opportunity to characterize groundwater prior to CO2-injection and establish baseline conditions at Claytonville. Methods of this study will include: (1) examination of existing analyses of saline to fresh water samples collected within an eight-county area encompassing SACROC and Claytonville, (2) additional groundwater sampling for analysis of general chemistry plus field-measured pH, alkalinity, and temperature, stable isotopic ratios of hydrogen (D/H), oxygen (18O/16O), and carbon (13C/12C), and (3) geochemical equilibrium and flowpath modeling. Existing groundwater data are available from previous BEG studies, Texas Water Development Board, Kinder Morgan CO2 Company, and the U. S. Geological Survey. By examining these data we will identify regional groundwater variability and focus additional sampling efforts. The objective of this study is to look for potential impacts to shallow groundwater from deep CO2-injection. In the absence of conduit flow from depth, we don’t expect to see impacts to shallow groundwater, but methodology to demonstrate this to regulators needs to be established. This work is a subset of the Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration Phase 2studies funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in cooperation with industry and government partners.Item Source-Sink Matching and Potential for Carbon Capture and Storage in the Gulf Coast(Proceedings of the 2006 UIC Conference of the Groundwater Protection Council, 2006) Ambrose, William A.; Breton, Caroline L.; Duncan, Ian; Holtz, Mark H.; Hovorka, Susan D.; Núñez-López, Vanessa; Lakshminarasimhan, SrivatsanCurrent global levels of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are 25.6 Gigatons yr. Approximately 1 Gigaton comes from the Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi Gulf Coast, representing 16 percent of the U.S. annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. The Gulf Coast region provides an opportunity for addressing the problem. Geologic sequestration results from the capturing of CO2 from combustion products and injecting the compressed gas as a supercritical fluid into subsurface brine aquifers for long-term storage. The Gulf Coast overlies an unusually thick succession of highly porous and permeable sand aquifers separated by thick shale aquitards. The Gulf Coast also has a large potential for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), in which CO2 injected into suitable oil reservoirs could be used first for EOR and then for large-volume, long-term storage of CO2 in nonproductive formations below the reservoir interval. For example, there are numerous opportunities for locating CO2 injection wells either in fields for EOR or in stacked brine aquifers near potential FutureGen sites, where a near-zero emission facility would generate primarily hydrogen and CO2 as by-products. We estimate that in the Gulf Coast, outside of the traditional area of CO2 EOR in the Permian Basin, an additional 4.5 billion barrels of oil could be produced by using miscible CO2. At $60 per barrel, this incremental production is estimated to have a wellhead value of $270 billion that could generate more than $40 billion in taxes.