Texas Offshore Miocene Project, Task 10

Risk Assessment

Using the results of the site characterization, Task 10 will identify site attributes that may pose a risk to future commercial development. We will conduct an analysis to determine and rank the potential risks that a future commercial project may encounter. This task will identify strategies to monitor for the various risk components identified and to mitigate those risks if necessary.

Some of the guiding questions we will consider when evaluating risk to commercial deployment of geological sequestration include:

1. Should offshore be considered at all? If so, why?
2. Where are most suitable areas?
3. What aspects of offshore CCS require unique requirements for site characterization and siting?
4. How are potential conflicts associated with competing interests to be addressed?

We have already assembled a bibliography of 67 articles related to various aspects of offshore sequestration & CO₂ impacts. In addition to consultation with partners and collaborators, as described below, this bibliography will be analyzed for trends, answers and insights to these guiding questions.

Task 10 has two major deliverables:

1. We will develop and demonstrate protocols for performing risk assessment for offshore Gulf of Mexico targets. This task will be undertaken by LANL using their system-level model CO2-PENS (Viswanathan et al., 2008; Stauffer et al., 2009). CO2-PENS is a system-level model that can be used to predict long-term performance of geologic CO₂ sequestration reservoirs. The models will be used to compare sites against each other specifically with respect to risks associated with CO₂ migration. Ian Duncan is primarily responsible for this work.
2. We will identify environmental risks specific to offshore settings. A major component of this work is GCCC's support of an investigation conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund to collect information on the various concerns of regional stakeholders. We will also interact with international organizations that have previously initiated activities related to offshore storage. In particular, we intend to interact with StatoilHydro and their collaborators to better appreciate their active offshore activities at Sleipner and Snovit. We will also interact with colleagues in Australia (CSIRO, Geoscience Australia) in the context of their 2009 offshore acreage release activities in areas such as Otway, Gippsland, Torquay, and others. Tip Meckel will lead the GCCC effort for this task.

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