Facts:

Main developer: Southern Company

Storage:

Members of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) are injecting CO2 into a coalbed methane well in Tuscaloosa County to assess the capability of mature coalbed methane reservoirs to receive and adsorb significant volumes of carbon dioxide. Southern Company, El Paso Exploration & Production, the Geological Survey of Alabama, and the University of Alabama are all participating in the field test, known as the Black Warrior CO2 Storage Project.

 

Testing storage combined with enhanced methane recovery

The SECARB members began injecting CO2 at the Alabama test site on June 15, 2010. Earlier, an existing coalbed methane well operated by El Paso Exploration & Production had been converted for CO2 injection, and four wells drilled to monitor reservoir pressure, gas composition, water quality, and the CO2 plume. (This test started in 2006 and is expected to end in 2010 (design – 2006-09; implementation – 2009-10), with a total cost of US $1,875,465 (US DOE share of 78.8%).)

 

The targeted coal seams are in the Pratt, Mary Lee, and Black Creek Coal groups within the upper Pottsville Formation and range from 940 to 1,800 feet in depth and from 1 to 6 feet in thickness. Two hundred and forty tons of CO2 will be injected over a 45- to 60-day period.

The site was selected because it is representative of the Black Warrior Basin, an area of about 23,000 square miles located in northwestern Alabama and northeastern Mississippi. Coal in the Black Warrior Basin has the potential to sequester 1.1 gigatons to 2.3 gigatons of CO2, approximately the amount that Alabama’s coal-fired power plants emit in two decades. The DOE estimates that enhanced coalbed methane recovery combined with CO2 storage could help produce another 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from these coal seams.

During and following injection, the project will monitor the injected CO2 at the surface and in the subsurface to ensure that storage is safe and permanent. Three deep subsurface monitoring wells will use pressure transducers and fluid sampling tubes to monitor the coal groups.

While CO2 is injected into one coal seam, the others should display a minimal pressure response if the CO2 remains in the original coalbed. Pressures will also be monitored inside the well to ensure that there are no leaks. Shallow groundwater and soil gas monitoring will provide important information that can be used to evaluate the environmental safety of carbon sequestration and enhanced coalbed methane recovery operations in the Black Warrior Basin.

Regional CO2 storage program

DOE created its regional carbon sequestration program in 2003 to determine which of numerous carbon storage approaches are best suited for different regions of the country. The partnership program completed its characterization phase in 2005 and is in its validation phase, which runs from 2005 to 2010 Sunoco and generally includes small-scale field tests such as the Black Warrior Basin CO2 Storage Project. The final phase, involving development, will run from 2007 to 2018 and include large-volume carbon storage tests. The National Energy Technology Laboratory manages the partnership program for FEO. 

One of the 7 US DOE Regional Partnerships, established to develop the necessary infrastructure, conduct field tests of carbon storage technologies and to evaluate options and potential opportunities for CO2 storage in the region. Various locations.

 

More info and press releases

Oil & Gas Journal
Carbon Capture Journal

IEA GHG

 

Global Enery Observatory

 

Homepage:

http://www.secarbon.org/