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Emissions Reduction Visual Presentation R01: An engineering toolkit to estimate the CO2 storage potential of the western Eromanga Basin, Australia

Tim Stephens A *
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A RISC Advisory, Perth, WA, Australia.




Tim Stephens has over 18 years of experience in upstream oil and gas, predominantly with small and mid-tier operators across multiple basins and reservoirs in Australia and New Zealand. In these roles, he has performed in-depth technical studies to advise on field development strategy, exploitation and optimisation of existing production at various levels of project maturity. Selected examples include analytical and numerical modelling and analysis of CSG production and forecasting, mature conventional onshore tight-gas reservoirs, onshore and offshore gas development and oil exploitation and horizontal well development. Tim holds Bachelor degrees with first-class honours in Science from the University of Queensland and a Master’s in Science (Petroleum Engineering) from Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh. He is currently employed as a senior consulting reservoir engineer at RISC Advisory.

* Correspondence to: tim.stephens@riscadvisory.com

Australian Energy Producers Journal 65, EP24537 https://doi.org/10.1071/EP24537
Published: 19 June 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of Australian Energy Producers.

Abstract

Emissions Reduction Visual Presentation R01

The western Eromanga Basin comprises a series of deep saline aquifers, covering more than 1,000,000 km2 of central Australia. The basin was evaluated as a potential CO2 sequestration target by Geoscience Australia as part of the Australian Future Energy Resources Project, supported by the Australian Government. RISC Advisory has provided Geoscience Australia with subsurface technical expertise to assist in quantifying the potential estimated ultimate storage volume range under the Society of Petroleum Engineers Storage Reservoir Management System framework. Given the vast area of investigation and relatively sparse geological information available, several industry standard subsurface engineering techniques were adapted by RISC to suit the specific needs of this project. These techniques included permeability upscaling to estimate aerial and vertical storage efficiency, estimation of CO2 fluid properties at reservoir temperature and pressure, and project development parameters such as well count, well injection rates, reservoir pressure with increasing storage volume and water offtake rates under different aquifer constraint scenarios. Low, best and high estimated storage volumes were generated using probabilistic uncertainty in both the basin-scale geological model and engineering workflows to give a range of CO2 storage volumes. This work describes the technical basis for the theoretical CO2 storage volume assessment of the western Eromanga Basin, and project development parameters for a typical 50 Mt storage project.

To access the Visual Presentation click on the link on the right. To read the full paper click here

Keywords: CCUS, CO2, efficiency, energy transition, EUS, global warming, greenhouse gas, sequestration, SPE-SRMS, storage.

Biographies

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Tim Stephens has over 18 years of experience in upstream oil and gas, predominantly with small and mid-tier operators across multiple basins and reservoirs in Australia and New Zealand. In these roles, he has performed in-depth technical studies to advise on field development strategy, exploitation and optimisation of existing production at various levels of project maturity. Selected examples include analytical and numerical modelling and analysis of CSG production and forecasting, mature conventional onshore tight-gas reservoirs, onshore and offshore gas development and oil exploitation and horizontal well development. Tim holds Bachelor degrees with first-class honours in Science from the University of Queensland and a Master’s in Science (Petroleum Engineering) from Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh. He is currently employed as a senior consulting reservoir engineer at RISC Advisory.