Saline aquifer CO2 storage modelling – harder than it sounds
Daniel Lorng Yon Wong A * and Wenbin Nah AA
Daniel Wong is a Senior Consultant at GaffneyCline based in Singapore, with over 12 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, with roles ranging from reservoir engineering to downhole equipment design and testing. At GaffneyCline, Daniel is heavily involved in CO2 storage resource assessments per the Storage Resources Management System (SRMS) and hydrocarbon resource assessments per the Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS). Daniel holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, where his research was sponsored by Total. He also holds a PgDip in Petroleum Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore. Daniel is first author of multiple papers as well as a book chapter, and is a listed inventor on several patents. |
Wenbin Nah is a Senior Advisor Reservoir Engineer with GaffneyCline, based in Singapore. As a Chartered Petroleum Engineer (CEng) with over 15 years of experience in the upstream oil and gas industry, Wenbin has led numerous reserves and resource assessments, mergers and acquisitions technical due diligence studies, and multidisciplinary asset characterisation projects. Wenbin has expertise in areas of reservoir modelling and simulation. Wenbin holds an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London, where he received the Energy Institute Award for Best Overall Student. Additionally, Wenbin has an MSc in Petroleum Geoscience from Royal Holloway, University of London, an MBA from IE Business School (ranked 1st in class), and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, graduating with First Class Honours and specialising in offshore oil and gas technology. |
Abstract
The development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities has been increasing rapidly in recent years, with hydrocarbon reservoirs and deep saline aquifers being the primary targets for CO2 storage. Saline aquifers typically offer larger storage resources and a low number of penetrations through their caprocks. As such, despite the historical lack of data acquisition relative to depleted reservoirs, CCS project developers remain interested in saline aquifer CO2 storage. This paper shares some challenges faced when modelling CO2 storage in saline aquifers, and the lessons learned from tackling these challenges. First, the paper highlights the outsized impact that the connectivity to a regional aquifer (relative to other sensitivities such as residual CO2 saturation, brine salinity, etc.) has on storable quantities. Specifically, subject to a maximum allowable storage pressure, a storage site needs to be connected to a regional aquifer several orders of magnitude larger than the storage site itself to have sufficient pressure space to store commercial quantities of CO2. Next, the paper discusses the computational cost of reservoir simulation for saline aquifers. Saline aquifer storage sites may extend to tens of kilometres in scale, so models need to be simplified to keep them computationally tractable while preserving the consistency of the simulated results. In this regard, various numerical approaches that simplify the physics simulated are shared, which can be considered by the reader for their own simulation models.
Keywords: carbon storage, CCS, decarbonisation, emissions, hysteresis, pressure space, reservoir simulation, saline aquifer.
Daniel Wong is a Senior Consultant at GaffneyCline based in Singapore, with over 12 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, with roles ranging from reservoir engineering to downhole equipment design and testing. At GaffneyCline, Daniel is heavily involved in CO2 storage resource assessments per the Storage Resources Management System (SRMS) and hydrocarbon resource assessments per the Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS). Daniel holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, where his research was sponsored by Total. He also holds a PgDip in Petroleum Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore. Daniel is first author of multiple papers as well as a book chapter, and is a listed inventor on several patents. |
Wenbin Nah is a Senior Advisor Reservoir Engineer with GaffneyCline, based in Singapore. As a Chartered Petroleum Engineer (CEng) with over 15 years of experience in the upstream oil and gas industry, Wenbin has led numerous reserves and resource assessments, mergers and acquisitions technical due diligence studies, and multidisciplinary asset characterisation projects. Wenbin has expertise in areas of reservoir modelling and simulation. Wenbin holds an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London, where he received the Energy Institute Award for Best Overall Student. Additionally, Wenbin has an MSc in Petroleum Geoscience from Royal Holloway, University of London, an MBA from IE Business School (ranked 1st in class), and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, graduating with First Class Honours and specialising in offshore oil and gas technology. |
