Assessment of CO2 storage capability in Denison Trough, Bowen Basin
Xingjin Wang A * , Chris Holmes A , Ahmad Dehghan Khalili A and Joan Esterle BA Denison Gas Ltd, Chatswood, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
B School of Earth and Enviromental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
The APPEA Journal 63 336-348 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ22043
Submitted: 12 December 2022 Accepted: 11 February 2023 Published: 11 May 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
The Bowen–Surat basin in eastern Queensland is a major centre of fossil energy production in Australia, producing 50% of Australia’s coal and 26% of Australia’s gas. Consequently, this region is also a major centre of carbon emissions. In 2018, fugitive emissions from the coal, oil and gas sectors were approximately 19.1 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, which accounts for 11% of Queensland’s total emissions. The Denison Trough, (central Queensland) is the western depocentre of the Bowen Basin, an area of major natural gas supply for eastern Australia. Since the 1960s, 14 gas fields have been discovered and brought onto production. Denison Gas holds 10 petroleum leases across these discoveries, with a total acreage of 1159 km2. There are over 60 production wells, of which over 20 are depleted or close to depleted, and they provide potential target sites for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Preliminary analysis shows the depleted reservoir in the Aldebaran Sandstone at the Merivale Field (southern Denison Trough) could be the first candidate for CCS. The subsurface depth of the reservoir is 850–1200 m and could retain CO2 in the supercritical phase. The permeability varies from 1 to 2000 mD. As the reservoir pressure has been depleted, it is expected the injection operation at the depleted wells will be achievable. A simulation for estimating storage capacity was performed by Denison Gas. The results show the depleted gas reservoir has the capacity of storing up to 70 BCF (3600 kt) of CO2 in the future. This result encourages further work to determine seal integrity and economic feasibility.
Keywords: Denison Trough, depleted gas reservoir, history match, injection rate, Merivale Field, permeability, simulation, storage capacity.
Dr Xingjin Wang holds a PhD degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of New South Wales and has over 30 years’ international experience in gas exploration and production applications as well as carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration both in China and Australia. He specialises in reservoir simulation, well test analysis, production performance analysis and reservoir characterisation. He is currently a founder and executive director of Denison Gas Ltd. Xingjin was the General Manager of Arrow Energy between 2007 and 2010. As a technical advisor to Gazprom, he was involved in a coal seam gas (CSG) pilot project in Siberia, Russia, between 2011 to 2014. Xingjin is an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ). He is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. |
Chris Holmes is currently the Subsurface Manager at Denison Gas. Chris, a petroleum geologist, has extensive experience in Australia’s major central and east coast basins. Chris worked for AGL for 13 years and was one of the founding members of the Upstream Gas group. Here he participated in and led teams responsible for major reserves growth and successful exploration and development campaigns targeting oil, gas and CSG, primarily in the Cooper, Surat–Bowen and Sydney Basins. He was also the technical lead in many new venture evaluations and several asset and company acquisitions. Prior to his time with AGL, Chris worked as a geologist at Sydney Gas Ltd and as a contract field geologist in the Bowen Basin CSG fields. |
Dr Ahmad Dehghan Khalili has over 18 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He has worked on conventional and unconventional assets, including development of underground gas storage, production optimisation and CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery and Carbon, Capture Usage and Storage projects and CSG field development. Ahmad has PhD degree in Petroleum Engineering from The University of New South Wales, a master's degree in Reservoir Geoscience and Engineering from the Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP-School, Paris, France) and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Shiraz University. |
Emeritus Professor Joan Esterle is the Chair of the Vale-UQ Coal Geoscience Program. Her research interests are varied but focus on how geological history impacts coal measure behaviour during mining, processing and utilisation. She is also working with Vale and other industry partners, she conducts multi-client studies through the Australian Coal Research Program, The Australian National Low Emissions Coal Research and the UQ Centre for Coal Seam Gas. She received her PhD from The University of Kentucky, USA, in 1990. |
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