News 2010
December 31, 2010: Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute. Changbing Yang was invited to give a seminar on the impact of sea level rise caused by global warming on sea water intrusion into coastal aquifers. Nanjing, China
December 13-17, 2010: American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. Katherine Romanak and coauthors including Changbing Yang and Susan Horvorka present poster "Extraction of Dissolved Gaseous Hydrocarbons from Brine at an Engineered CO2 Injection, Cranfield, Mississippi." JP Nicot presents poster "Current and future water needs of the shale gas industry in Texas." Changbing Yang and coauthors including Katherine Romanak, Susan Hovorka, and Ramón Treviño present poster "Monitoring and Modeling CO2 Dynamics in the Vadose Zone near an Abandoned Historic Oil Well: Implications for Detecting CO2 Leakage at Geological CO2 Sequestration Sites." Hilary Olson of STORE and coauthors present poster "Climate Literacy Initiatives as part of the TXESS (TeXas Earth and Space Science) Revolution Program." San Francisco, CA
December 10-12, 2010: 3rd U.S.-China CO2 Emissions Control Science & Technology Symposium. Changbing Yang presents a talk on US Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership as part of a panel session. Hangzhou, China
Changbing Yang attends the 3rd US-China Symposium on CO2 Emission Control Science & Technology. Click photo to view larger.
Tip Meckel gives keynote address at RITE in Kyoto, Japan.
December 9, 2010: Japanese Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE). Tip Meckel was the invited keynote speaker for the annual review meeting of CCS research for RITE with 200 invited national researchers and industry representatives present. Meckel presented a summary of current CCS research in the US, focusing on accomplishments of the Gulf Coast Carbon Center in field tests monitoring CO2 injection at Cranfield, MS. In the coming year, Meckel and Sue Hovorka will host a field experiment conducted by RITE at the Cranfield site using passive microseismic techniques. Collaborations have also been initiated between GCCC and RITE in monitoring of offshore CCS projects, in concert with an ongoing DOE-funded project at BEG under PIs Meckel and Ramón Treviño to evaluate storage opportunities in the Texas offshore Gulf of Mexico. Kyoto, Japan
December 6-7, 2010: 8th Annual EOR Carbon Management Workshop. Susan Hovorka is technical session lead for "EOR using Industrial CO2—Reservoir and Surface Monitoring, Reporting and Verification." See co2conference.net/agenda_houston.html for complete agenda. Houston, TX
November 17, 2010: Southwest Research Institute. Hilary Olson of STORE attends "Technologies for Climate Change Mitigation." San Antonio, TX
Clean Air Task Force delegation at the "Green Gen" (IGCC Plant) construction site near of Tianjin, China
November 13-20, 2010: Clean Air Task Force. Ramón Treviño represents the Gulf Coast Carbon Center during a week-long fact finding mission to China with a delegation of 30 public, private and NGO leaders. The representatives will visit several carbon capture and sequestration sites and zero emissions power plants in China. To view the complete press release, please click here. Tianjian, Shanghai, Langfang, and Beijing, China.
November 19, 2010: The American Oil & Gas Reporter updates February 2010 Cover Story on our sponsor and site host Denbury Resources Inc. and their emergence as a leader in CO2 EOR. For full story click here.
November 10-12, 2010: Society for Petroleum Engineers International Conference on CO2 Capture, Storage and Utilization. Tip Meckel presents "Above-Zone Pressure Monitoring as a Surveillance Tool for Carbon Sequestration Projects." JP Nicot attends conference. New Orleans, LA
November 10, 2010: University of Bern. Katherine Romanak presented "Monitoring CO2 Storage in Deep Geological Formations." Bern, Switzerland
November 9, 2010: STORE Training Course: Storage of CO2 in Geological Formations in association with SPE International Conference on CO2 Capture, Storage and Utilization. Tip Meckel, JP Nicot, and Rebecca Smyth are part of a team of instructors for the course, which focuses on CO2 Storage through an integrated approach combining petroleum engineering, environmental geology, and reservoir geology. New Orleans, LA
November 8, 2010: University of Geneva. Katherine Romanak presented "Pilot studies of CO2 injection into geologic reservoirs as a prelude to large scale carbon sequestration" at the Séminaire du Département de Géologie et Paléontologie. Geneva Switzerland
November 2-4, 2010: IEAGHG workshop: Natural Releases of CO2: Building Knowledge for CO2 Storage Environmental Impact Assessments. Katherine Romanak presented "Soil-gas behavior and measurement in a carbon-reactive natural analogue; implications for near-surface monitoring." She also chaired a session called "Monitoring Challenges in Light of Natural Systems" served on the on the steering committee for the meeting. Maria Laach, Germany
October 31-November 3, 2010: Geological Society of America Annual Meeting. Erin Miller presents "Deciding on capacity calculation methodology for the Texas submerged lands capacity assessment." Kerstan Wallace presents "CO2 sequestration potential of Miocene sandstone reservoirs, offshore Texas state waters, Gulf of Mexico." Denver, CO
October 26, 2010: QUEST Program at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at The University of Texas. Rebecca Smyth presents "Fundamentals of Carbon Capture and Storage." Austin, TX
October 10-12, 2010: 60th Annual Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Convention. Tip Meckel, David Carr, and Ramón Treviño present "An offshore carbon repository in Miocene strata under Texas state waters." Susan Hovorka presents "Strategy for monitoring carbon dioxide sequestration." Seyyed A. Hosseini presents "Gas-Cap Impact on CO2 Plume Migration for Long-Term Storage in Saline Aquifers," which is co-authored by JP Nicot and Silvia Solano. Stuart Coleman presents, "Cost Comparisons for Mitigating Fluctuations in Power Plant CO2 Capture in Integrated Carbon Capture and Sequestration Network by Using a Stacked Storage Geologic System." Masoumeh Kordi presents "Diagenesis and Reservoir Heterogeneity in the Lower Tuscaloosa Formation at Cranfield Field, Mississippi" which is co-authored by Hovorka, Kitty Milliken, Treviño, and Jiemin Lu. San Antonio, TX
October 10, 2010: STORE Training Course: Storage of CO2 in Geologic Formations in association with GCAGS Meeting. Rebecca Smyth and Tip Meckel teach a short course on the current status of carbon sequestration technology. San Antonio, TX
GCCC's Ramón Treviño (far right) receives award from the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum recognizing the completion of the Frio test.
October 6-8, 2010: Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) Annual Meeting. Ramón Treviño presented an overview of the ongoing research of the Department of Energy's Southeast Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) CO2 injection field experiment at Cranfield Field, Mississippi. After consideration, the CSLF Policy Committee accepted SECARB/Cranfield as a "CSLF Recognized Project". SECARB is the second GCCC study to earn such recognition. The first was the now complete Frio Project, which earned global recognition for its advances in the effort toward commercial implementation of geologic carbon sequestration. Ramón accepted the award from Polish Deputy Prime Minister, Waldemar Pawlak on behalf of GCCC Team Leader, Susan Hovorka. Warsaw, Poland
October 5-7, 2010: DOE/NETL Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Review Meeting. Tip Meckel and Ramón Treviño attend and present "Gulf of Mexico Miocene CO2 Site Characterization Mega Transect." Katherine Romanak, Rebecca Smyth, Changbing Yang, Susan Hovorka, and Jiemin Lu present poster "Results of the SWP Phase II shallow groundwater study at the SACROC oilfield: Implications for monitoring geological sequestration sites." Pittsburgh, PA
September 30-October 1, 2010: STORE Outreach and Education: Energy, Climate, and Water in the 21st Century. Susan Hovorka, Rebecca Smyth, and Katherine Romanak meet with middle and high school girls and during a day-long workshop. Romanak presents "What to do with CO2?". Smyth presents "What is in the water you drink?" Hovorka presents "CO2: Too much of a good thing." BEG Director Scott Tinker gave a keynote lecture on "Time, Technology and Transition." Ursuline Academy, Dallas, TX
September 22 2010: Dionex 2010 Fall Seminar Series Changbing Yang attended the conference and met with technicians from Dionex who are helping GCCC build an on-line automatic chemical system for high pressure and high temperature batch and column experiments of brine-rock-CO2 interactions. Austin, TX
September 21-22, 2010: Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration Phase II Final Annual Meeting. Katherine Romanak presents "Results of the SWP Phase II SACROC groundwater study." Albuquerque, NM
September 19-23, 2010: International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Technologies (GHGT10) Susan Hovorka presents "Monitoring a large volume CO2 injection: Year two results from SECARB project at Denbury's Cranfield, Mississippi, USA," which is co-authored by Tip Meckel, JP Nicot, Katherine Romanak along with 19 others. Hovorka also chairs a session on saline aquifers. JP Nicot presents "Numerical modeling of CO2 injection into a typical U.S. Gulf Coast anticline structure," which is co-authored by Jong-Won Choi, Meckel, and Hovorka. Kyungwon Chang presents "Effects of adjacent mud rocks on CO2 injection pressure: model case based on a typical U.S. Gulf Coast salt diapir field under injection," which is co-authored by Nicot and Hovorka. Nicot presents "Sensitivity Study of CO2 Storage in Saline Aquifers in the Presence of a Gas Cap," which is co-authored by Silvia Solano and Seyyed A. Hosseini. Nicot presents "Are single-phase flow numerical models sufficient to estimate pressure distribution in CO2 sequestration projects?", which is co-authored by Choi. Amsterdam, The Netherlands
September 14, 2010: Greater Houston Partnership Climate Change Committee. Susan Hovorka presents "Update on Gulf Coast Carbon Center Research on Geologic Sequestration" via teleconference.
August, 24, 2010: Advances in CO2 Injection and Storage in Geological Formations. GCCC staff teach new class in Fall 2010 on applied aspects of CCS for students enrolled at UT Austin. For more information click here [PDF]. Austin, TX
August 16-20, 2010: Thirteenth meeting of the Water Rock Interaction Working Group of the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. Katherine Romanak attended and presented "The Role of dedolomitization in the detection of anthropogenic CO2 in freshwater aquifers." Guanajuato, Mexico.
July 23, 2010: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scott Tinker, Ian Duncan and Susan Hovorka presented at the "Symposium on the Role of Enhanced Oil Recovery in Accelerating the Deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage." jointly hosted by MITEI and BEG. Boston, MA
July 18-28, 2010: Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration (RECS) summer program. GCCC Research Intern Erin Miller attended a 10-day course consisting of scientific, technical, and policy lectures from top researches in the CCS field. Hands on experience in the field consisted of a fracture mapping exercise, surface monitoring observation, McElmo Dome plant tour, and a coal fired power plant tour at the PNM San Juan Generating Station. Albuquerque, New Mexico with field visits to Farmington, New Mexico, Durango, Colorado, and Mesa Verde, Colorado.
July 7, 2010: UK Geological Storage and Monitoring of CO2. The aim of the meeting was to develop CO2 geological storage and monitoring research capacity in the UK for the coming demonstration storage projects being funded by DECC's (Department of Energy and Climate Change) CCS competition. Researchers involved in CO2 storage projects around the world presented their latest results, helped define gaps in knowledge, and identified priority research needs for UK carbon geologic storage. Jiemin Lu's presentation "Monitoring CO2 injection at Cranfield field, Mississippi, USA" showed the updated geophysical and geochemical data and discussed lessons learnt from SECARB's Cranfield carbon sequestration project. The discussions will feed into research proposals for new CO2 injection operations in the UK. Edinburgh, UK
June 15-16, 2010: Department of Energy Geosciences Workshop on Carbon Sequestration and Geothermal Energy Systems. Susan Hovorka participates on the Subsurface Characterization and Development Panel. Washington, D.C.
June 28, 2010: GCCC will receive up to $19 million from the U.S. Department of Energy and NRG Energy to design and oversee a monitoring plan for a carbon capture and storage demonstration project in southeast Texas.
June 9, 2010: Carbon Capture and Sequestration Public Workshop sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Resources Defense Council. Susan Hovorka presents talk "Ensuring Monitoring and Storage Security." Sacramento, CA
May 19, 2010: Review of GCCC groundwater studies at British Petroleum (BP) America offices. Katherine Romanak, Rebecca Smyth, and Changbing Yang presented recent results of groundwater studies at the SACROC oilfield in Texas and the Cranfield oilfield in Mississippi to BP Houston and UK (via weblink) personnel. Houston, TX
May 14, 2010: . Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Earth Institute at Columbia University. Katherine Romanak met with Klaus Lackner to discuss technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. New York NY
May 14, 2010: Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. Katherine Romanak met with collaborators and toured the laboratories and a push/pull test site. She discussed possible collaborations with LDEO's Carbfix project in Iceland. New York NY
Click photo to view larger.
May 13, 2010: Thar Facilities at Waters Company. Katherine Romanak met with engineers who are designing a high temperature and pressure experimental apparatus for GCCC's new laboratory. Newark, DE
Changbing Yang (left) and Katherine Romanak (right) discuss CCS at the GCCC's information booth. Photo by David Freeman.
May 10-13, 2010: National Energy and Technology Laboratory (NETL) Annual Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Meeting. Presentations made by Susan Hovorka, Changbing Yang, Tip Meckel, JP Nicot, Katherine Romanak, Rebecca Smyth, Ramón Treviño, Jiemin Lu,Jong-Won Choi, Masoumeh Kordi, Stuart Coleman, Carey King, and Yihua Cai. For complete list of presentations please click here [PDF]. Pittsburgh, PA
May 9, 2010: UK-Texas CCS Technology and Legislation Seminar. GCCC and UK continue collaboration during workshop between UK and US researchers. (Attendance by invitation only.) Pittsburgh PA
Members of IEAGHG R&D Programme and the Gulf Coast Carbon Center during a Monitoring Network meeting in Cranfield Field, MS
May 6-8, 2010: International Energy Agency (IEA) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) R&D Programme. GCCC is sponsoring a monitoring network meeting in Natchez with a field trip to Cranfield Field. Natchez, MS
May 6, 2010: STORE launches new website. The overall mission of the Alliance for Sequestration Training, Outreach, Research and Education (STORE), which is partnered with GCCC, is to promote better understanding of CO2 sequestration science and engineering technology. See all of STORE's activities at www.storeco2now.com. STORE Co-PI and Project Director Hilary Olson (right) and Victoria Osborne of Striker Communications, Marketing/Communications specialist for STORE, demonstrate new STORE website at IEAGHG Monitoring Network field trip in Cranfield, MS.
May 6, 2010: Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage Public Meeting. DOE Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Jim Markowsky and Deputy EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe invite Ian Duncan to be part of the CO2 Storage Panel. President Obama established the Task Force and charged it with proposing a plan to overcome the barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with a goal of bringing five to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016. Washington, D.C.
GCCC's Susan Hovorka (left) during discussion with members of the Expert Panel.
May 5, 2010: Expert Panel on Site-Specific Monitoring. Funded by the EPA and CCP, the first meeting of the Panel initiated discussions on determining the most appropriate monitoring approaches and strategies for carbon sequestration dependent on site-specific characteristics. Nachez, MS.
Carey King (fourth from left) visits Sandow Power Plant.
April 26, 2010: Field Trip to Luminant's Sandow Power Plant. Organized by Carey King and Cliff Clark of Luminant, University of Texas graduate and undergraduate students toured the power plant and discussed past and future challenges for energy services in Central Texas with Steve Skidd, the Director of Generation, and Brad Masek, Plant Engineer. Rockdale, Texas. Please click here for full story
April 9-10, 2010: American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Pre-convention Field Trip. Susan Hovorka and Tip Meckel showcase monitoring results from large volume injection test. Cranfield, MS
April 6-9, 2010: University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs Biennial Global Climate Forum: After Copenhagen: Collaborative Response to Climate Change. Ramón Treviño gave a talk and Susan Hovorka participated on panel "Can Carbon Capture Mitigate Greenhouse Gases?". Austin, TX
The Gulf Coast Carbon Center hosts Dr. Tiziana Vanorio of Stanford University (fourth from left, front row).
March 26, 2010: Gulf Coast Carbon Center. Dr. Tiziana Vanorio from Stanford University's spoke with members of GCCC about the rock physics program she leads in the Department of Geophysics and explored potential areas of collaboration. Austin, TX.
BEG's Eric Potter lectures on geologic sequestration at BGP in Zhouzhou City, China.
March 25-31, 2010: Susan Hovorka visited China to talk about GCCC research part of a BEG delegation with Eric Potter and Honglui Zeng. She visited Dr. He Dengja and Xiao Jianxin at China Univerisity of Geosciences in Beijing, gave a lecture at BGP (China National Petroleum Company) in Zhuozhou City, Hebei province, and visited RIPED and Peking University.
March 24-25, 2010: International Conference on Carbon Storage Opportunities in the North Sea Conference hosted by The Geological Society. The GCCC was invited to share current research in order to compare and contrast GeoSequestration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico with efforts in the North Sea. Ramón Treviño represented the GCCC and presented a short overview of past and recent GCCC GeoSequestration research plus a summary of two current Gulf of Mexico carbon sequestration assessment and mapping studies. Click here to view Treviño's full presentation [PDF]. London, UK
Kerstin Wallace and David Carr study cores in the BEG's Core Research Center.
March 12, 2010: The Core Research Center of the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology. University of Texas geology student Kerstin Wallace has been mentored by GCCC researcher David Carr to examine a core of Miocene fluvial-deltaic sandstones beneath State waters in the offshore Gulf of Mexico. This sand-rich interval is under investigation as a potential high-volume target for geologic storage. Austin, TX
Scientists, engineers, and policy makers from Mexico, the United States and Canada met to discuss the development of the North American Carbon Atlas. GCCC's Ramón Treviño is third from the right in the center row.
March 9-10, 2010: 3rd Meeting of North America Carbon Atlas Partnership. NACAP is a partnership among Canada, Mexico and the United States to identify the sources of CO2 and the sinks for storing it in North America in order to advance the potential for carbon capture and storage to mitigate climate change. Ramón Treviño was invited to the meeting by the Department of Energy to present GCCC's current DOE-sponsored efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Trevino's trip was funded by the Southeast Carbon Partnership (SECARB Phase III) and STORE (Sequestration Training Outreach Research and Education), another DOE sponsored project. Click here for a PDF of Trevino's presentation [PDF]. Cuernavaca, Mexico.
March 9-10, 2010: Fifth Annual SECARB Stakeholders Briefing hosted by Southern States Energy Board. Ian Duncan presented "Gulf Coast Stacked Storage Project" in a session on SECARB completed Phase II projects. Susan Hovorka presented "Results from the SECARB Phase III Early Test at Denbury's Cranfield Field" where GCCC has lead a tream of collaborators to monitor diverse aspects of commercial injection at rates greater than 1 million tons/year. Atlanta GA
March 7-10, 2010: GCCC Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE NETL) Jiemin Lu begins experiments in collaboration with DOE NETL scientists who have designed two autoclave reactors to study CO2-rock-water interactions. To read the full story, please see the Cranfield Log. Pittsburgh, PA
March 9, 2010: The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) proposed rules that pertain to geologic storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2-A) in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) fields (productive reservoir or saline formation immediately overlying or underlying the productive reservoir) in Texas. The proposal should be published in the March 26, 2010 issue of the Texas Register; the deadline to submit comments is 5:00 p.m., Monday, April 26, 2010. Click here for a PDF version of the proposal [PDF].
February 16-18, 2010: Carbon and Climate Change hosted by University of Texas Continuing Legal Education. Ian Duncan presents "Carbon Management Challenges and Role of CCS and EOR" at Pre-Workshop Seminar: Geological Storage Policy: Federal Impacts, Commercial Opportunities. Carey King is a member of the panel "Technology and Trigger Points, Part II: Economics and Incentives of Carbon Capture and Mitigation." Scott Tinker presents "The Texas Edge, Part I: Geology and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)." Austin, TX
Scott Tinker and Katherine Romanak discuss the GCCC's near-surface monitoring program.
February 4, 2010: BEG director Scott Tinker visited the Cranfield test sites for a film he is making on energy. Tinker interviewed Denbury president Tracy Evans and GCCC researchers Susan Hovorka and Katherine Romanak about the process of monitoring enhanced oil recovery to show that geologic sequestration is occurring.
February 3-4, 2010: Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE NETL) planning meeting for FOA-33 Awards. Tip Meckel and Ramón Treviño attend and discuss Texas Submerged Lands Sequestration Project. Pittsburgh, PA
February 2, 2010: Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development (RIPED), PetroChina. Jiemin Lu presents a talk "Monitoring CO2 injection at Cranfield, MS, USA." The talk was given to a group of researchers working on CO2-EOR projects in Jilin Province, China. Beijing, China.
January 25-27, 2010: Annual Underground Injection Control (UIC) Conference of the Groundwater Protection Council. Carey King presents Lunch Keynote address, "Water and Energy: Strategic Thinking" Susan Hovorka and Rebecca Smyth report on activities of the regional DOE geosequestration partnerships. Austin, TX
January 25, 2010: Meeting with regulators from US EPA Region Underground Injection Control (UIC) Program National Technical Workgroup. JP Nicot hosts an informal meeting at GCCC bringing together regulators and researchers to explore the regulatory and the research points of view on CO2 geologic sequestration and future technologies. Austin, TX
January 21, 2010: The Gulf Coast Carbon Center (GCCC) hosted the annual meeting of its Industrial Associates. Representatives from many of the Industrial Associates—Environmental Defense Fund, Exxon Mobile, Schlumberger Carbon, Conoco Phillips, Marathon, BP, Kinder Morgan, Chevron, Aramco, Entergy, and Luminant—were in attendance. Presentations were made by GCCC researchers Susan Hovorka, Ramón Treviño, David Carr, Katherine Romanak, JP Nicot, and BEG researcher Gurcan Gulen. GCCC students and research assistants presented their major achievements.The focus of the meeting was a five year retrospective of GCCC accomplishments and the development of plans for future GCCC activities over the coming five years.
January 20-22, 2010: 10th National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment. Carey King presents "Texas and the clean energy transition: Can the most energy and CO2 intensive state lead the way?" Washington D.C.
January 18-22, 2010: Tip Meckel represents GCCC at a workshop that is a collaboration between Geoscience Australia and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and their research partners, and is supported under the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The workshop focuses on capacity building in the area of geological storage in China, plus facilitating storage-related research and prospectivity assessments. Canberra, Australia.
January 12-15, 2010: The Global Climate and Energy Project and the U.S. Geological Survey. Jiemin Lu presents poster "Seal characterization for Cranfield CO2 injection site, Mississippi, USA" at a workshop on "Caprocks and Seals for Geologic Carbon Sequestration." Monterey, CA
January 12-13, 2010: Mudrock Systems Research Laboratory Annual Meeting, Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin. Jiemin Lu co-authors talk presented by Kitty Milliken "Characterization of a Tuscaloosa Mudrock seal at the Cranfield CO2 sequestration site." Austin, TX
January 8, 2010: Meeting with UT's Energy Institute and LBJ School of Public Policy. GCCC hosted D. Ray Orbach, Director of the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Director Charles Cooke. Other attendees included Dr. Eugene Gholz from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Ann Flemings from the Jackson School of Geoscience's Development Program. Topics covered included the current research projects of the Gulf Coast Carbon Center and the goals of the Energy Institute as they relate to geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. Austin, TX.
