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Regional Simulations of the Well-related Migration Risk at Weyburn, the World’s Largest CO2 Project
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, Second EAGE Sustainable Earth Sciences (SES) Conference and Exhibition, Sep 2013, cp-361-00028
- ISBN: 978-90-73834-53-8
Abstract
The IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project is an industrial-scale geological storage project associated with enhanced oil recovery at the Weyburn oil field, Saskatchewan, Canada. To date, over 17 Mt of CO2 has been stored at 1.4 km depth. The storage site and four overlying aquitards are penetrated by a large number of oil wells. The Weyburn region has more than 4,000 wells within a risk assessment area of 2,000 km2. This well density is typical of prospective CCUS storage areas in the USA and Canada. The average well separation is 275 meters, with about 5% of the population less than 20 meters apart. These wells are considered to have an elevated risk potential for leakage pathways above the storage site. The high well density and regional scale presents a major challenge for flow modeling. We use a hydrodynamic invasion percolation approach, assuming capillary limit conditions, to simulate CO2 migration throughout the region at a high resolution. The resolution is sufficient to identify wells that lie along migration pathways and trap structures where leakage may occur. This indicates a subset of 62 wells within the regional population of 4012 wells that are marked for further risk assessment.