2020-03 Faults and their Significance for Large-Scale CO₂ Storage Workshop

Background to the Study

The success of CO₂ Capture and Storage (CCS) technology depends on the safe, secure and long-term storage of CO₂ at large-scale (mega tonnes per site). Upward migration and leakage of injected CO₂ along faults is a key risk.

Key Messages

The aim of the workshop was to gain a greater understanding on how faults could influence long-term storage of CO₂. The workshop built on oil and gas industry experiences, as well as the research community, to gain a clear perspective on fault properties that are important to CO₂ storage. The 1-day event provided an opportunity to review laboratory experiments, field studies, and modelling results, to gain insights on the importance of faults for CO₂ storage. Current practices to evaluate fault seal as well as critical technical gaps were discussed.
The workshop gave an opportunity to review current research on CO₂ controlled release experiments and what could be learned from them, plus the contribution from simulations. The 1-day event documented critical issues for CO₂ storage related to faults, the experience of current experimental work, and identify remaining gaps in knowledge.
IEAGHG would like to thank the sponsors University of Calgary, CMC Research Institutes and Canada First Research Excellence Fund, for their contributions to this event.

You can download this report here.