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Title: Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults

Abstract

One of the main concerns of storage in saline aquifers is leakage via faults. In the early stages of site selection, site-specific fault coverages are often not available for these aquifers. This necessitates a method using available fault data to estimate the probability of injected carbon dioxide encountering and migrating up a fault. The probability of encounter can be calculated from areal fault density statistics from available data, and carbon dioxide plume dimensions from numerical simulation. Given a number of assumptions, the dimension of the plume perpendicular to a fault times the areal density of faults with offsets greater than some threshold of interest provides probability of the plume encountering such a fault. Application of this result to a previously planned large-scale pilot injection in the southern portion of the San Joaquin Basin yielded a 3% and 7% chance of the plume encountering a fully and half seal offsetting fault, respectively. Subsequently available data indicated a half seal-offsetting fault at a distance from the injection well that implied a 20% probability of encounter for a plume sufficiently large to reach it.

Authors:
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
Earth Sciences Division
OSTI Identifier:
1055774
Report Number(s):
LBNL-5284E
Journal ID: ISSN 2152-3878
DOE Contract Number:  
DE-AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Journal Article
Journal Name:
Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 1; Journal Issue: 2; Related Information: Journal Publication Date: 2011; Journal ID: ISSN 2152-3878
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; 58 GEOSCIENCES

Citation Formats

Jordan, P D. Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults. United States: N. p., 2011. Web. doi:10.1002/ghg.17.
Jordan, P D. Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/ghg.17
Jordan, P D. 2011. "Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/ghg.17. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1055774.
@article{osti_1055774,
title = {Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults},
author = {Jordan, P D},
abstractNote = {One of the main concerns of storage in saline aquifers is leakage via faults. In the early stages of site selection, site-specific fault coverages are often not available for these aquifers. This necessitates a method using available fault data to estimate the probability of injected carbon dioxide encountering and migrating up a fault. The probability of encounter can be calculated from areal fault density statistics from available data, and carbon dioxide plume dimensions from numerical simulation. Given a number of assumptions, the dimension of the plume perpendicular to a fault times the areal density of faults with offsets greater than some threshold of interest provides probability of the plume encountering such a fault. Application of this result to a previously planned large-scale pilot injection in the southern portion of the San Joaquin Basin yielded a 3% and 7% chance of the plume encountering a fully and half seal offsetting fault, respectively. Subsequently available data indicated a half seal-offsetting fault at a distance from the injection well that implied a 20% probability of encounter for a plume sufficiently large to reach it.},
doi = {10.1002/ghg.17},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1055774}, journal = {Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology},
issn = {2152-3878},
number = 2,
volume = 1,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2011},
month = {Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2011}
}