Lacq Pilot - The History of Selecting the Reservoir, Injecting and On-going Long Term Stability Demonstration

Total is committed to reducing the impact of its activities on the environment, especially its greenhouse gas emissions. It has been involved in CO2 injection and geological storage for over 15 years, in Canada (Weyburn oil field) for EOR and Norway (Sleipner, Snohvit) for aquifer storage. In 2006, the company decided to invest 60 million euros to experiment CO2 capture, transportation and injection in a depleted gas reservoir. The pilot in the Lacq basin, was on stream from January 2010 to March 2013. This paper summarizes the main features encountered during the whole life of the project from: storage site selection including risk analysis and environmental impact studies, baseline preliminary monitoring, injection and monitoring-verification plan conducted, up to post-injection monitoring plan and long term stability on-going demonstration. After three years of injection, the monitoring of the Lacq french pilot has demonstrated that the CO2 remains so far well confined within the reservoir. Reservoir behavior was also well anticipated by dynamic models (low monitoring-models offset). As anticipated, no problem of injectivity was detected either. The post-injection monitoring plan, based on an update of the risk analysis is now being reviewed by French administration. Long term stability demonstration is still on-going.