News Release, Kansas Geological Survey, Feb. 8, 2011

Kansas Geological Survey receives additional $5 million to study CO₂ storage

LAWRENCE--The Kansas Geological Survey based at the University of Kansas has received a second $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for an ongoing study on the feasibility of storing carbon dioxide underground in Kansas and using CO₂ to recover more oil from nearly depleted fields.

DOE also awarded the Survey nearly $5 million for this collaborative effort between government and industry in 2009.

Survey researchers Lynn Watney and Saibal Bhattacharya are lead investigators for both projects, which will span more than three years and include scientists from the Survey, the KU and Kansas State University Departments of Geology, and a number of private companies.

Four additional petroleum companies and three industrial partners who could potentially supply CO₂ have joined the new study, which now encompasses all or part of 31 counties from a line east of Wellington and El Dorado to the Colorado border and from the Oklahoma border to a line just north of Larned.

Participation by local industry, which provides access to oil and gas leases and technical knowhow, is essential, Bhattacharya said.

"Having the local oil and gas industry as stakeholders will encourage them to participate in infrastructure development related to sequestration and enhanced oil recovery by CO₂ injection," he said.

Part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the DOE awards are being used to determine if largely depleted Kansas oil and gas fields in south-central and southwestern Kansas and the Arbuckle saline aquifer that underlies much of the state can be used to safely store CO₂ emitted by stationary sources such as electric, cement, ethanol, and fertilizer plants. The researchers also will build models to predict how that CO₂ could be used to produce trapped oil in nearly spent fields that is unreachable by traditional methods.

"The new DOE funding provides the resources to expand our evaluation of the benefits of using CO₂ to boost oil recovery," Watney said. "We're now able to extend our analysis beyond the geologic formations such as the Mississippian reservoirs in the Wellington field and south-central Kansas to include the Chester-Morrow reservoir in southwestern Kansas."

The investigators are currently drilling a 5,200-foot deep borehole in the Wellington oil and gas field in Sumner County south of Wichita. A second well in the field, which has produced 20 million barrels of oil since 1927, will be completed in late February.

Samples and data collected from the two holes will provide insight into the subsurface rock units and their capacity to securely contain CO₂. The project is aimed at characterizing the subsurface and modeling the movement of underground fluids, and will not include any injection of CO₂.

Geophysical methods such as seismic reflection, a technique commonly used in oil exploration to create images of underground rocks from the surface, have been used to provide more data on the Wellington field and underlying Arbuckle saline aquifer. The Arbuckle, about 4,000 feet beneath the surface in south-central Kansas, is part of the expansive Ozark Plateau Aquifer System. The highly saline water in the Arbuckle aquifer is not usable and is isolated from shallower freshwater aquifers by impermeable rock units.

Another seismic survey, covering approximately 10 square miles, will be shot in southwestern Kansas in late summer. Data from the surveys will be examined in conjunction with more than 200 additional square miles of seismic data donated by the oil and gas industry.

"Issues such as injection capacity, safety, and risks related to CO₂ injection will be studied by subjecting geologic models of the subsurface to computer simulations to assess capacities and risk," Watney said. "The models are created by integrating data collected from three wells drilled as part of this project and numerous existing wells, along with new and existing data from remote sensing, seismic, and gravity-magnetic studies."

Besides investigating the safety of storing industry-emitted CO₂, the researchers will build models to predict how that CO₂ could be used to produce additional oil.

"This study will help quantify the tonnage of CO₂ that can be sequestered in the process of enhanced oil recovery in depleted fields," said Bhattacharya.

Results from these studies, such as successful characterization of subsurface rocks and modeling activities, could help justify a new industry to capture, transport, and store CO₂. That could, in turn, enhance state and local economies and reduce the discharge of CO₂ into the atmosphere, he said.

"Individually, none of these depleted fields have enough oil-recovery potential to make a CO₂ pipeline viable," said Bhattacharya. "But together, they might justify the investments necessary to make sequestration and enhanced oil recovery from CO₂ injection a reality."

The Survey also is conducting a separate DOE-funded study on the Arbuckle's capacity to store CO₂ in Ellis County, where researchers are drilling a lateral borehole with Wichita-based industry partners Murfin Drilling Company and Vess Oil Corporation. Total DOE funding of the Survey's CO₂ sequestration research is $11.5 million.