Topic 4: The U in CCUS

Gulf Coast Carbon Center 2018-2022 Aspirational Multi-Year “Big” Plan

Problem statement
Substantive progress has been made demonstrating the value of captured CO₂ for EOR as well as analysis of CO₂ EOR’s role in storage (for example, calculation of carbon balance for EOR lifecycle). This understanding of the use of CO₂ for EOR increases the already high attractiveness of this high quality, value-added offtake for captured CO₂. However gaps exist in our understanding of the role of CCUS in CO₂ emissions mitigation, and filling these gaps with data may illuminate the value, costs, limits, and risks of carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) as part of the energy landscape discussed in topic 1.

Goals

• To critically assess the economic value of various CO2 EOR approaches and the potential relations with environmental elements of CCS.
• To evaluate the various settings where CO2 might be injected for economic profit in terms of their added value to CCS, such as:
  • tight reservoirs,
  • naturally fractured or hydro-fractured reservoirs,
  • residual oil zones,
  • gravity-dominated floods,
  • offshore settings, and
  • carbonate and clastic settings

Methods

• Review and synthesize global projects, studies, and literature.
• Analyze outcomes of real projects where possible
• For the identified reservoir settings, consider various scenarios:
  • Evaluate economic value of hydrocarbon recovery, and volumes, locations, risk for CO₂ storage.
  • Integrate options such as
    • lifecycle emission,
    • interactions among components of the value chain and the
    • impact of policy
    • project cost and value, and
    • source-sink matching
  • Run numerical and analytic models ranging from multi-component simulations to economic models

Four-year target accomplishments
• A mature understanding of CCUS economics including:
• The impact of oil price, potential carbon markets or tax incentives the value of carbon balance and NCNO the business opportunity for CCUS
• Broadened range of application
• Understanding of reservoir settings currently excluded from CCUS commercialization and their role in an energy ecosystem
• Improved efficiency in standard applications
• Best reservoir management

Go to Topic 3: Real-World Leakage Assessment

Go to Topic 5: Monitoring Lifecycle

Last Updated: June 25, 2019