Published by the DTI Oil & Gas Directorate for the reservoir engineering and IOR community in the UK.
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AEA Technology Oil and Gas - Subsurface

AEA Technology has been providing high quality, specialised petroleum engineering services to the oil and gas industry since 1976. AEAT has a team of experienced professional staff working in geoscience, reservoir engineering, simulation, fluid processes and laboratory studies. The main themes of AEA Technology's services are laboratory SCAL measurements and analysis, geostatistical modelling, reservoir simulation, decision risk management and IOR screening and appraisal.

CO₂ Injection and Sequestration - work in progress

Claire Woods (claire.woods@aeat.co.uk)

In a worldwide context, concern over greenhouse gas emissions is leading to the introduction of CO₂ trading schemes and possible changes in fiscal regimes. With the right reservoir conditions, injection of CO₂ into oil reservoirs can result in incremental oil with the added benefit of CO₂ sequestration. CO₂ injection is a successful IOR technique in onshore North American reservoirs.

The DTI is engaged in projects under the SHARP programme to examine a range of subsurface issues associated with CO₂ injection in UKCS fields, for which there are not good analogues from existing onshore experience. The PVT properties of CO₂ would result in some significant differences in in-situ properties compared to conventional hydrocarbon gas injection. A comparison of literature correlations for CO₂ minimum miscibility pressures with estimates from other sources found potentially significant uncertainties in these pressures.

A key deliverable from the current DTI SHARP projects is an estimate of the overall UKCS potential for CO₂, expressed in terms of additional oil production and the amount of CO₂ retained in the reservoir. A project is underway to estimate the UKCS IOR potential from CO₂, and the associated CO₂ retention, with uncertainty ranges. Preliminary results suggest that CO₂ injection could increase UKCS reserves substantially and dispose of a significant fraction of the CO₂ emitted from UK power generation/industry.

The additional effort required to source CO₂ in the UK and deliver it to the platform requires a strategic approach to its use on the UKCS. The time line for each option will be controlled by diverse factors such as environmental legislation, emerging technology, the maturity of the province and the changing attitude of major operators. A project is planned to model scenarios in which CO₂ injection could be viable on the UKCS. Its aim is to provide a framework for discussion of CO₂ injection opportunities between interested parties, having sufficient flexibility to reflect changing conditions.

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