South West Hub Project, Western Australia: appraising ‘migration-assisted’ containment for carbon storage in sandstone strata
Dominique Van Gent A , Martin Burke B and Sandeep Sharma C DA Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum, Level 10 Bunbury Tower, 61 Victoria Street, Bunbury, WA 6230, Australia.
B Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum, 100 Pain Street, East Perth, WA 6004, Australia.
C Carbon Projects Pty Ltd, Perth, WA, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: sharmass@bigpond.com
The APPEA Journal 57(2) 669-675 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ16024
Accepted: 9 March 2017 Published: 29 May 2017
Abstract
The South West Hub project (SW Hub) managed by the Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) Carbon Strategy Branch, is continuing to build confidence in storage associated with migration assisted trapping (MAT) in unconfined saline aquifers. The area of interest is in the Harvey and Waroona Shires near large CO2 emission sources in the industrial centres of Kwinana and Collie.
The injection target is the Lower Lesueur sandstone, a 1500 m thick reservoir with varying permeability layers that should support residual and solubility trapping. The storage complex has no regional shale layer and depends on MAT for primary containment, with the 600 m thick Upper Lesueur with its numerous paleosol baffles as the lower confining layer and the basal shale part of the Eneabba Formation as the upper confining layer.
Detailed models have been built based on new 2D/3D seismic surveys and core/log data from the drilling of four wells over a five year period. The results, which include extensive sensitivity analysis, indicate that commercial quantities of CO2 may be injected safely with the plume remaining within the injection reservoir.
Uncertainties do remain and the next stage of the program is aimed at reducing these. Significant technical work has also been done through research projects executed by the National Geosequestration Laboratory (NGL) and funded by the Australian National Low Emissions Coal research and development program (ANLEC R&D).
This paper will summarise the geological setting, the technical workflow/activities and assurance processes together with the significant community and stakeholder management efforts undertaken.
Dominique Van Gent is the Coordinator of Carbon Strategy with the Department of Mines and Petroleum in Western Australia. He was educated in Perth and has a Masters degree in Literature and Communication and a Master of Business Administration (MBA). For the last 30 years he has lived and worked in Bunbury, Western Australia. Dominique worked in Regional Development assisting the resources industry on major projects, on the development of industrial areas and on infrastructure issues. He played a key role in establishing local content strategies that maximised opportunities for regional firms on the construction of the Collie power station and other projects. He has a long-term interest in industrial development and is a former chair of the Small Business Centre in Bunbury. He has found that his MBA has developed his understanding of the economic, cultural and business drivers of industry. Dominique has been responsible for the development and management of the South West Hub Project, which is characterising a potential onshore CO2 storage area in the Shire of Harvey in the south-west of Western Australia. To date, the project has conducted a 2D seismic survey, Australia’s most complex 3D seismic (over 115 km2 of rural and environmentally sensitive land) and drilled four wells between 1450 and 2945 m in depth. Dominique brings many years of community engagement experience to the task of exploration and characterisation of an onshore field. |
Martin Burke is the Project Manager for the South West Hub carbon capture and storage (CCS) project which is currently managed by the Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum.��Martin commenced working on CCS in 2007 while working in coal policy for the Australian Government. As part of the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative, Martin was the Government representative on the working group formed to establish the National Research Program and ANLEC R&D. He also assisted in the formation and running of the National Low Emissions Coal Council and establishment of the Global CCS Institute. As one of the first employees of the Global CCS Institute, Martin led the process that established the international definition of CCS Ready and contributed to the Institute’s policy and regulatory work program. Originally from Sydney, Martin has an Arts degree (politics and international relations) and a Masters in Politics and Public Policy from Macquarie University. |
Sandeep Sharma has been involved with CCS for over a decade. Roles have included being Program Manager of the Otway CCS Program with the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) on secondment from Schlumberger and being the Regional Manager, Australasia for Schlumberger Carbon Services. In Schlumberger (1981–2013) he worked across the globe and held a wide variety of senior positions in operations management, marketing and new product development. Since 2013, Mr Sharma is working as an independent consultant in CCS. He is currently engaged with the Australian Flagship South West Hub Project as Program Advisor and Embedded Technology Manager (ETM) for ANLEC R&D. He has a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (India), a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (UK), has been a Visiting Fellow of the Sloan School, MIT (USA) and a Masters in Sustainability Management (Australia). He is a member of the SPE and SPWLA, has been awarded 2 patents and has authored/co-authored several technical papers. |
References
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