Technical Barriers and R&D Opportunities for Offshore, Sub-Seabed Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide
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Technical Barriers and R&D Opportunities for Offshore, Sub-Seabed Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide Report Prepared for the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) Technical Group By the Offshore Storage Technologies Task Force September 14, 2015 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was prepared by participants in the Offshore Storage Task Force: Mark Ackiewicz (United States, Chair); Katherine Romanak, Susan Hovorka, Ramon Trevino, Rebecca Smyth, Tip Meckel (all from the University of Texas at Austin, United States); Chris Consoli (Global CCS Institute, Australia); Di Zhou (South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China); Tim Dixon, James Craig (IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme); Ryozo Tanaka, Ziqui Xue, Jun Kita (all from RITE, Japan); Henk Pagnier, Maurice Hanegraaf, Philippe Steeghs, Filip Neele, Jens Wollenweber (all from TNO, Netherlands); Philip Ringrose, Gelein Koeijer, Anne-Kari Furre, Frode Uriansrud (all from Statoil, Norway); Mona Molnvik, Sigurd Lovseth (both from SINTEF, Norway); Rolf Pedersen (University of Bergen, Norway); Pål Helge Nøkleby (Aker Solutions, Norway) Brian Allison (DECC, United Kingdom), Jonathan Pearce, Michelle, Bentham (both from the British Geological Survey, United Kingdom), Jeremy Blackford (Plymouth Marine Laboratory, United Kingdom). Each individual and their respective country has provided the necessary resources to enable the development of this work. The task force members would like to thank John Huston of Leonardo Technologies, Inc. (United States), for coordinating and managing the information contained in the report. i EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report provides an overview of the current technology status, technical barriers, and research and development (R&D) opportunities associated with offshore, sub-seabed geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). Specifically, the report includes: Existing and proposed offshore storage and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects. The current status of offshore CO2 storage and EOR resource capacity assessments. Current status of transport, wellbore/well construction, and monitoring technologies, the potential challenges, and R&D opportunities. Existing and proposed regulatory requirements. Risk analysis tools and methodologies and R&D opportunities. Recommendations for further action. While onshore geologic storage has been emphasized in many carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, offshore storage provides several advantages: Near-offshore capacity is globally significant and information where available from oil and gas exploration and production provides a good understanding of the offshore geology. There is a single owner and manager of both mineral and surface rights. Risks to freshwater aquifers are less of a concern. Existing pipeline rights-of-way for oil and gas production could facilitate CO2 pipeline infrastructure development. For federally-owned storage resources, revenues could be generated from offshore carbon storage activities. Monitoring technologies exist, but there is potential for improvement. However, there are several challenges that exist, some of which are similar to onshore storage activities: Containment risks presented by existing wells. Protection of competing economic and environmental interests: for example, commercial fisheries, sensitive ecosystems, and existing and undiscovered gas resources need protection. Elevated costs: Despite existing offshore pipelines, costs of operating offshore projects are likely to be significantly higher than those onshore, as experience from decades of oil and gas extraction regionally indicate. Accessibility: Some near-offshore regions may have unique development challenges related to infrastructure development. Impact of CO2 on marine ecosystems: Much work has identified the ongoing risks of ocean acidification via CO2 absorption from the atmosphere, and the more localized impacts from well leakage were less understood but these are being studied and there is a growing body of knowledge. ii Today, there are only a handful of offshore storage projects that are currently injecting CO2 into saline formations: the Sleipner and Snøhvit projects in Norway, and the K-12B project off the coast of the Netherlands. There is also one CO2-EOR project that is operational in Brazil. However, about a dozen more projects have been proposed, including projects in Japan, China, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. These projects play an important role in understanding the offshore storage environment and application of CCS in an offshore setting. The key recommendations from the report can be categorized into five areas, which are storage capacity assessments, transport infrastructure, offshore CO2-EOR potential and opportunities, understanding CO2 impacts on the subsea environment, and monitoring technology development. Storage Capacity Assessments: It would help prospective CCS stakeholders if public-private partnerships were developed to provide a number of pre-qualified storage locations. For such locations, all preparatory work, including the documents for a storage permit application could be made available to reduce the uncertainty regarding the availability of storage. This would support both the storage and the transport elements of CCS projects. It is recommended that a more thorough evaluation of the geologic storage aspects of many basins be pursued. It is also recommended that an increased level of knowledge sharing and discussion be implemented among the international community to outline the potential for international collaboration in offshore storage. Transport Infrastructure: The CO2 transportation infrastructure must increase significantly and will be an important contributor to the overall costs for CCS. Hence, optimization of current practices is important, on areas such as CO2 product specifications and sharing of infrastructure to optimize utilization. Additionally, during the pilot and demonstration phase of CCS, CO2 volumes will be relatively small. However, these projects could be developing the first elements of the large-scale infrastructure, if sufficient incentive is given to oversize the components of the transport infrastructure. Especially during the early phase of CCS, public-private partnership is essential to generate these large infrastructural works. An increase in the available financial incentives for (offshore) CCS projects is needed to increase the speed of development of offshore CCS. Funding mechanisms should consider funding operational costs, as well as up-front investments. Offshore CO2-EOR: Offshore CO2-EOR is seen as a way to catalyze storage opportunities and build the necessary infrastructure networks. One of the barriers reported widely for offshore CO2- EOR projects is the investment required for the modification of platform and installations, and the lost revenue during modification. Recent advances in subsea separation and processing could extend the current level of utilization of sea bottom equipment to also include the handling of CO2 streams. By moving equipment required to separate and condition the CO2 to the seafloor, iii modifications to the platform can be minimized. It is recommended that RD&D activities explore opportunities to leverage existing infrastructure and field test advances in subsea separation and processing equipment. Understanding CO2 Impacts on the Subsea Environment: It is recommended to expand upon modeling efforts to understand CO2 dispersion in an ocean environment. Whilst the primary driver of the spatial extent of detectability and impact is the leakage rate, many other factors such as depth, bubble size, current speed, tidal mixing and topography are shown to have a large influence on dispersal. Existing models are robust, but limited in that they generally cannot deal with very fine scales (≈1 meter) which are necessary for the correct treatment of small leak scenarios at the same time as accurately defining regional scale mixing processes, necessary for the correct estimation of dispersion. Model development of marine systems is required to improve their predictive capabilities. Advances are needed so that systems can simulate leakage in the context of natural variability by combing both pelagic and benthic dispersion and chemistry, including carbonate and redox processes. There is also a need to develop models that can simulate large scale dispersion of multi-phase plumes whilst simultaneously simulating tidally-induced dispersion in the near and far field. Monitoring Technology Development: Deep-focused monitoring relies heavily on established hydrocarbon industry tools which are mature. There is scope for improving some of these technologies and related data processing and interpretation for CO2 storage. The quantification of CO2 distribution within a reservoir still remains a challenge. Shallow-focused monitoring is less advanced compared with deep focused monitoring, but systems are being developed and demonstrated. New marine sensor and existing underwater platform technology such as automated underwater vehicles (AUVs) and mini-remotely operated vehicles (Mini-ROVs) enable deployment and observation over large areas at potentially relatively low cost. Seafloor and ocean monitoring technologies can detect both dissolved phase CO2 and precursor fluids (using chemical analysis) and gas phase CO2. AUV technology capable of long- range deployment needs to be developed so that the AUV can be tracked transmit data via a satellite communications system. Real-time