The search for new oil and CO2 storage resources: residual oil zones in Australia
Aleksandra Kalinowski
A * , Eric Tenthorey A , Mojtaba Seyyedi B and Michael Ben Clennell B
A Geoscience Australia, Symonston, ACT, Australia.
B CSIRO, Kensington, WA, Australia.
The APPEA Journal 62(1) 281-293 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21077
Submitted: 14 January 2022 Accepted: 24 February 2022 Published: 13 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
Abstract
Residual oil zones (ROZs) could present a new, potentially large and commercially viable oil resource for Australia and provide an avenue for geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) through CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). These reservoirs, which can contain a moderate amount of residual oil and resemble water-flooded oil fields, can be associated with conventional fields (brownfields) or occur with no associated main pay zone (greenfields). Both types of ROZ are currently produced commercially through CO2-EOR in the Permian Basin, USA, and are of growing interest internationally, but our understanding of the occurrence and economic viability of oil production from ROZs in Australia is limited. We are employing geological and petrophysical methods to identify, map and quantify the potential oil resources of ROZs, initially in central Australian basins. Complementing this, we are conducting a series of CO2 core-flooding experiments combined with reservoir modelling to investigate the techno-economic feasibility of producing oil and storing CO2 in these formations. We aim to establish and test a workflow for characterising and evaluating ROZs in Australia. ROZs could prove to be good targets for CO2-EOR+, potentially even producing carbon-neutral or carbon-negative oil by using CO2 from anthropogenic sources, such as from blue hydrogen production.
Keywords: CO2-EOR, carbon capture utilisation and storage, CCUS, Cooper Basin, core‐flooding experiments, enhanced oil recovery, Exploring for the Future, petrophysics, residual oil zone, ROZ, subsurface characterisation.
Aleksandra Kalinowski is a Senior Geoscientist at Geoscience Australia and holds an undergraduate degree in Geology from the Australian National University (ANU) and a PhD from the University of New South Wales. She has worked extensively on Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage, including undertaking geological assessments for carbon dioxide (CO2) storage and working on technical and policy aspects of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Energy and the Environment and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Aleks continues to focus on low-emissions energy resources, most recently focusing on geological storage combined with utilisation of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR), as well as hydrogen and geothermal energy. |
Eric Tenthorey is a Senior Researcher at Geoscience Australia, with expertise in geomechanics, carbon capture and other low carbon geoscience disciplines. He holds a PhD from Columbia University and has subsequently worked as a researcher at ANU. In 2007, he was engaged by Geoscience Australia to work as a geomechanics expert with the CO2CRC: a cooperative research centre focused on developing and proving up CCS technology. More recently, his work has centred on other low carbon geoscience sectors, such as the hydrogen energy future, geothermal energy, and CO2-EOR. |
Mojtaba Seyyedi is a Research Scientist at CSIRO Energy. He is a Reservoir Engineer specialising in CO2 utilisation/EOR and storage with over 10 years of international experience consulting for the world’s leading oil and gas companies. Mojtaba has led and contributed to multiple major CO2-EOR and/or storage projects in the Middle East, UK, Denmark, Canada, Malaysia, Brazil and Australia. He holds a PhD in Reservoir Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, UK. |
Michael Ben Clennell is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Energy. He holds a PhD in Geology from the University of London. His research interests range across all aspects of rock physical properties applied to petroleum geoscience, hazard reduction (earthquakes, submarine landslides, gas hydrates) and, more recently, CO2 storage (injectivity and containment). He has worked extensively on the fluid flow properties of reservoir rocks, seal rocks and fault rocks and the petrophysical characterisation of conventional and unconventional reservoirs and CO2 storage sites. His work, leading the Geodata Analytics Research team, also involves the development of automated methods for subsurface characterisation, combining machine learning with knowledge from domain experts. |
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