Southeast Offshore Storage Resource Assessment (SOSRA) (Final Technical Report)
- Southern States Energy Board, Peachtree Corners, GA (United States)
- Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
- Oklahoma State Univ., Stillwater, OK (United States)
- Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States)
- Advanced Resources International, Knoxville, TN (United States)
Subsurface geologic storage of CO2 can play a major role in offsetting greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that is safe, economical, and acceptable to the public. Due to legal advantages and potential vast resource capacity, offshore storage offers an attractive alternative to onshore storage. Indeed, the success of the Sleipner project in the North Sea demonstrates the technical feasibility of offshore storage as not only a viable option, but as an early opportunity for commercial deployment. Although the storage capacity of offshore reservoirs is expected to be vast, no comprehensive assessment of the offshore storage resource in the southeastern United States had been performed. In a preliminary analysis of a 10,000 mi2 area of offshore Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle, Hills and Pashin (2010) suggested that about 170 Gt of CO2 could be stored in Miocene sandstone and that at least 30 Gt could be stored in deeper Cretaceous formations. A task force convened by the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) found that no assessment had been made of the offshore storage resource potential in the shelf areas of the Atlantic seaboard and the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the southeastern US. Considering that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 40% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the US are generated in the southeast, the lack of an offshore CO2 assessment constitutes a major gap in understanding of the regional storage resource. In order to address this significant gap in knowledge of the regional storage resources and geologic capacity the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) led a coalition of southern universities and technical experts to assess prospective geologic storage resources for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the State and Federal waters of three planning areas: The Mid-Atlantic; The South Atlantic; and The eastern Gulf of Mexico. The Southeast Offshore Storage Resource Assessment (SOSRA) project developed a high-level approximation of the amount of CO2 that might be stored utilizing key geologic and environmental factors which influence the storage potential. The research included significant advances in knowledge and technology that will facilitate assessment and quantification of offshore CO2 storage resources in the SOSRA region and provide a pathway toward commercialization.
- Research Organization:
- Southern States Energy Board, Peachtree Corners, GA (United States); Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States); Oklahoma State Univ., Stillwater, OK (United States); Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States); Advanced Resources International, Knoxville, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FE0026086
- OSTI ID:
- 1606208
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-SSEB-0026086-29
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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