Calculating the probability of injected carbon dioxide plumes encountering faults
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.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Earth Sciences Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1055774
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-5284E
- Journal Information:
- Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology, Vol. 1, Issue 2; Related Information: Journal Publication Date: 2011; ISSN 2152-3878
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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