American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2023 - 83

SpecialReport: CCS Feasibility Studies
helpful to detect changes in fracture response
on seismic data caused by changes
in CO2 saturation.
Borehole multicomponent acoustic
logs also could prove useful. Research
suggests they can identify far-field fractures,
which is vital to understanding
fracture connectivity and delineating potential
CO2 plume migration pathways.
Passive seismic has a lower resolution
than active or controlled-source seismic,
but because it is cheaper, it can be used
for long-term monitoring. For example, it
may detect injection-induced seismicity.
Since the lateral extent of a CO2 plume
may be limited (say to within a few hundred
feet from the injection zone) in
mudrocks, and since the potential for
well leakage exists, borehole and crosshole
geophysical surveys may be worthwhile.
However, some of the borehole
conditions themselves (e.g., enlarged
boreholes, thick cement, or large assemblies
of tools, cables and sensors) can
generate noise, including false positives,
that hinder accurate monitoring.
New and emerging monitoring technologies
need to be implemented at multiple
test sites with different geologic settings
to prove their efficacy. Most importantly,
we need to establish proper
baseline characterization criteria, as good
characterization is the key to effective
monitoring.
These challenges should not deter interest
in storing carbon in depleted unconventional
reservoirs. Much remains
to be learned, but such storage could provide
new options for achieving net-zero
emissions while generating additional
economic benefits for operators. r
Editor's Note: This article was adapted
from " Feasibility of CO2 Storage in DeSHENG
PENG is a research scientist with the Bureau of
Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin.
Peng's research focuses on petrophysics and fluid flow in
unconventional reservoirs. He develops and applies laboratory
and analytical methods for measuring porosity, permeability,
relative permeability, resistivity and wettability. To understand
the fundamental controls of fluid flow and links between
geology and engineering problems, he also develops integrated
imaging and imbibition techniques for multiscale processes
of fluid flow in scenarios of primary production and CO2 enhanced
oil recovery and storage.
LEOPOLDO MATIAS RUIZ MARAGGI is a reservoir engineer
within the State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery
program at the Bureau of Economic Geology. His research
interests include conventional and unconventional oil and
gas resources, subsurface hydrogen and CO2 storage.
Leopoldo holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from University
of Buenos Aires in Argentina, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas
at Austin.
SHUVAJIT BHATTACHARYA is a research scientist at
the Bureau of Economic Geology. He has expertise in petrophysics,
quantitative seismic and machine learning applications.
He has worked on multiple projects on unconventional
reservoirs, carbon capture and storage, geothermal, and
hydrogen storage. Bhattacharya received the Society of Exploration
Geophysicists' J. Clarence Karcher Award in 2022
and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Gulf
Coast Section's A.I. Levorsen Award in 2023 for outstanding
scientific contributions.
pleted Unconventional Oil and Gas Reservoirs:
Capacity, Microscale Mechanism,
Injectivity, Fault Stability, and Monitoring, "
a paper originally presented at the
Unconventional Resources Technology
Conference, which was held June 13-15
in Denver. The full paper includes the
equations underlying the capacity estimates,
validates those estimates using
rate transient analysis, describes labscale
studies that show how well CO2
displaces in-situ oil and water and presents
two case studies related to analyzing
fault reactivations.
The authors acknowledge the State of
Texas Advanced Oil and Gas Resource
Recovery program, the Mudrock System
Research Laboratory consortium, and
The Tight Oil Resource Assessment program
at the Bureau of Economic Geology
for the initial financial seed to start the
development of this work.
KATY YUT is a GIS energy data analyst at the Bureau of
Economic Geology. She has expertise in data manipulation
and visualization using R and in geospatial analyses in ArcMap
and QGIS. Yut graduated from the University of Oklahoma in
2021 with undergraduate degrees in both economics and geographic
information science, as well as an M.A. in economics
with a focus in big data. She joined the BEG in 2022.
TIM MCMAHON is the project manager for the Bureau of
Economic Geology's Tight Oil Resource Assessment, which
focuses on basin-scale resource assessment of unconventional
oil and natural gas plays. Before joining the BEG in July
2022, McMahon spent more than 25 years as an oil and gas
geologist. After leaving ConocoPhillips, he worked as an independent
geoscientist doing exploration and consulting
around play-based exploration, resource assessment and
machine learning. He received a B.A. in geology from Rutgers,
an M.S. in geology from New Mexico State University and a
Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
MAHDI HADDAD is a geomechanicist at the Bureau of
Economic Geology who has 15 years of experience conducting
research on induced seismicity and hydraulic fracture
modeling, mapping and diagnostics. He recently completed
a U.S. Department of Energy project on electromagnetic
fracture mapping at the Devine Field Test Site and various
fault-reactivation studies for the TexNet/Center for Integrated
Seismicity Research consortium. For work on poroelastic
modeling for caprock integrity of carbon dioxide storage
reservoirs and for fracture intersections to improve microseismicity
interpretations, Haddad earned the 2018 Cedric
K. Ferguson Medal from SPE International.
SEPTEMBER 2023 83
American Oil and Gas Reporter - September 2023

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