Technical de-risking of a demonstration CCUS project for final investment decision in Australia

Mohammad Bagheri joined CO2CRC in late 2017 and is currently working as a Subsurface Manager. He is a Reservoir Engineer with 17 years of international oil and gas experience covering reservoir simulation, CO₂ EOR and CCUS projects, reserve assessment, analytical reservoir engineering, well performance and nodal analysis, field development planning, well-test analysis and design, core and fluid analysis, production engineering and field operations in Australia, Europe and the Middle East. In his current role, Mohammad is managing the subsurface activities across the organisation with a multi-disciplinary team including geophysicists, geologists and reservoir engineers. Mohammad holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. He started his career with NIOC in 2003 as a field engineer and subsequently worked for Statoil, Schlumberger, British Gas and Santos as both production and reservoir engineer in different time periods between 2005 and 2017. Mohammad is recognised as a Chartered Professional Engineer with Engineers Australia. He is a member of the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland and certified by SPE as a Petroleum Professional. Mohammad has been appointed as the Program Chair for the Victorian and Tasmanian chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers since 2018.

Dr Roman Pevzner has a PhD in Geophysics (2004) from Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia). He was heading software development department in DECO Geophysical (Moscow, Russia) service company in 2002–2008. At the same time he was involved in research and teaching at Geological Faculty of LMSU, Seismometry and Geo-acoustics Department. Dr Pevzner was appointed as A/Professor in Discipline of Exploration Geophysics at Curtin University (Perth, Australia) in 2008, progressing to Professor in 2018. His main areas of interest are signal processing, borehole seismic methods and time-lapse seismic surveys and he has coauthored 3 book chapters, 55 journal papers and more than 150 refereed conference publications.

Charles Jenkins is an Applied Physicist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge and now works with CSIRO Australia with CO2CRC. He has previously worked in a variety of instrument design roles, including seven years with Schlumberger. Since 2008 he has been involved in the design and operation of the Otway Project, where his principal responsibilities have been in managing the M&V programme, with associated experience in project design, risk assessment, regulatory compliance and public relations. The Otway Project Stage 1 stored 65 000 t of CO₂ and the lessons learned from this project were summarised in a major paper published in 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Charles is the Science Lead for the successor AU$45 million Stage 3 project which began drilling operations in July. Charles is a Fellow of the UK Institute of Physics and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

Dr Matthias Raab is an experienced manager with international credentials in successful, high profile and complex projects in industry and academia. He has 23 years of experience in commercial and R&D environments with major sector clients. At CO2CRC Ltd, Dr Raab manages large project portfolios with teams of up to 70 people and annual budgets of up to AU$20 million. As Chief Operations Officer, Dr Raab has strategic and operational responsibility for CO2CRC’s research facilities, research programs and the delivery of major research and infrastructure projects. Dr Raab manages a group of Senior Program, Project and Operations Managers and provides leadership to CO2CRC’s strategic planning and implements new strategic initiatives. Dr Raab’s overall portfolio includes the AU$45 million research program in Carbon Capture and Geological Carbon Storage, the CO2CRC Otway Field Facility, the Stage 3 Expansion of the Otway Project and the AU$51.6 million infrastructure grant awarded to CO2CRC under the Education Investment Fund. In previous roles Dr Raab managed Australia’s largest 2D marine seismic survey in Bass Strait, led the Victorian carbon capture and storage (CCS) initiative exploring for industrial scale CO₂ storage in the Gippsland Basin and was a Project Manager building and documenting the border between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen

Paul Barraclough is an Oil and Gas Professional who commenced a career as a Chemical Engineer working with BHP Engineering in the Western Australian Pilbara region and subsequently moved into the oil and gas service industry to embark on an international career spanning the next 17 years. Opportunities with the industry’s largest oil and gas service company, working within the Testing Services Reservoir Characterisation Group, spanned more than a dozen countries and several highly technical field and office-based roles with a continuing focus on reservoir measurements and characterisation as well as supporting roles with personnel and HSE. In managerial roles both internationally and domestically (within Australia), multiple high profile offshore and land-based projects for the segment were managed through to successful delivery – including most recently, operations in the North-West Shelf of WA, Barrow Island, PNG and eastern Australia. Paul’s current role with CO2CRC Ltd, focuses on project management for the field deployment and testing of innovative CCS technologies and solutions for industry, starting in 2018. Field execution for this project – named CO2CRC’s Stage 3 Project – commenced in earnest in 2019 with the drilling and completion of four new in-field wells to facilitate the testing of efficient and economic subsurface monitoring solutions for the CCS industry. The project will continue through to an operational phase in 2020/21 to be managed through to conclusion in 2022.

Dr Max Watson has ~20 years’ experience in CCS, working in academic, industry and R&D management sectors, gaining insights from a variety of countries and business types. He graduated from the University of Adelaide with a PhD in Petroleum Geoscience and has worked in various Post-Doctoral to Senior Research positions at the University of Adelaide, examining geochemical and risk management processes for CO2 storage. Max previously worked with BP Alternative Energy (2008–2012), supporting BP as it developed international commercial scale CCS projects through the development of risk based project management processes, applying these to the In Salah Gas Project JV and other emerging CCS projects. He joined CO2CRC in 2012 as Project Development Manager and has progressed through various roles including Storage Program Manager in 2015, and Business Strategy Manager in 2018. He’s currently accountable for planning, executing and implementing strategy across CO2CRC, with a particular focus towards applied storage technology demonstration. Max’s work enables CO2CRC to translate innovative, user driven technologies from bench to field scale. In addition, Max leads the implementation of the Otway International Test Centre, and associated GFV field based projects. He is also Australia's delegate for the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, a Ministerial-level international climate change initiative.

Dr Tess Dance has worked for more than 15 years in the field of CCS, characterising sites for the geological storage of CO₂, first with Geoscience Australia’s Petroleum and Marine division in Canberra, then with the Cooperative Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) and now with the CSIRO in Perth. Her expertise is in sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy and translating that to 3D geological modelling for CO₂ uncertainty risking and injection simulation. She is the geologist for the CO2CRC Otway Project, where she is researching the geological characteristics that influence residual trapping and dissolution storage mechanisms in a saline aquifer and providing critical geological support for the Stage 3 operations.