SECARB Regional Project Assessment
- Southern States Energy Board, Peachtree Corners, GA (United States)
The SECARB Cranfield Early Test Project was designed to safely demonstrate large-scale, long-term CO2 injection and storage in a CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operation and associated saline reservoir. Storage during EOR operations has the potential to offset commercial costs, holding a significant promise for future large-scale deployment in the southeastern United States. Denbury Onshore LLC began CO2-EOR operations in July 2008 at the Cranfield oilfield located east of Natchez, Mississippi (Figure 1). The location offered an ideal setting to investigate storage monitoring at a commercial CO2-EOR operation. The field team, led by the Gulf Coast Carbon Center of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, deployed the largest suite of monitoring, verification, accounting (MVA) technologies to collect data to assess long-term CO2 utilization and storage. The CO2 injection interval is within the 3,000-meter-deep fluvial lower Tuscaloosa Formation, a large and regionally extensive saline reservoir, at a broad four-way structural closure that defines the Cranfield oilfield. Tests were conducted in the oil-producing area as well as in the non-oil-producing brine aquifer. The CO2 used during EOR operation was transported via pipeline from the Jackson Dome, a natural source of CO2. The study focused on four integrated research areas: (1) the High-Volume Injection Test area (HiVIT); (2) the Detailed Area of Study (DAS); (3) the Geomechanical area; and (4) the near-surface observatory, also called the “P-site.” CO2 injection occurred at the HiVIT and the DAS (Figure 2 and Figure 3). The DAS was located down-dip of the oil-water interface of the Cranfield oilfield. The well layout included one injection well and two down-dip observation wells. The team was the first of the regional partnerships to monitor more than 1 million metric tons of CO2. At the end of the project, the team monitored more than 11 million metric tons of CO2 injected and 5 million metric tons of CO2 stored. The Cranfield Project was the fifth project worldwide, and the first such project in the United States, to reach this CO2 injection volume while being monitored to demonstrate storage effectiveness.
- Research Organization:
- Southern States Energy Board, Peachtree Corners, GA (United States); National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA, Morgantown, WV, and Albany, OR (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-05NT42590
- OSTI ID:
- 1823038
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-SSEB-42590-219
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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