NEW NORTH AMERICAN ATLAS SHOWS LARGE GEOLOGIC POTENTIAL FOR CO2 STORAGE

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
05/04/12

PITTSBURGH—A new atlas of North America’s CO2 storage potential released here earlier this week estimates that the continent has enough geologic storage space in saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas reservoirs and unmineable coal seams to sequester carbon dioxide emissions for at least 500 years. The U.S. Department of Energy and its Canadian and Mexican counterparts unveiled the North American Carbon Storage Atlas at the Eleventh Annual Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Conference May 1, providing one of the most detailed assessments yet of the potential geologic resources available for carbon capture and storage projects on the continent.

Using data collected over the last three years from Natural Resources Canada, the Mexican Ministry of Energy and DOE’s seven regional carbon sequestration projects, the atlas includes high- and low-end estimates for potential storage formations. It also maps the storage data against the locations of the continent’s approximately 2,250 largest point sources of CO2 emissions. The atlas finds that even on the low end of its estimates, North America has enough sinks, reservoirs and seams to store centuries of CO2 emitted at existing levels from large point sources, and at its best could provide thousands of years of permanent storage via enhanced oil recovery or deep saline storage.

U.S. Contains Largest Storage Capacity

The atlas finds that the U.S. has by far the most storage potential in saline aquifers on the North American continent but must also contend with many more point sources and megatons of CO2 emitted from those facilities than its Mexican and Canadian neighbors. The U.S. has anywhere from 1,610 to 20,155 gigatonnes of storage capacity in saline aquifers, 120 Gt for depleted oil and gas reservoir capacity and 61-119 Gt of storage in unmineable coal seams, according to the atlas. However, that capacity must also in theory manage more than 3,000 megatons of CO2 emitted annually from 1,800 stationary sources.

In Canada and Mexico those numbers are much smaller, with both countries counting 188 point sources each that cumulatively emit 219 and 205 Mt of emissions annually, respectively. The atlas indicates that Canada has anywhere from 48 to 320 billion Gt in storage capacity available in saline reservoirs, coal seams and oil and gas reservoirs. However, in Mexico that number is far smaller because the country’s coal basins are not suitable for CO2 storage and few oil and gas reservoirs are available.

Atlas to Help Quantify EOR Opportunities, DOE Says

In its juxtaposition of point source locations and geologic formations suitable for CO2 storage, DOE said the atlas is a particularly useful tool to help quantify opportunities available for carbon capture, utilization and storage projects across the country, particularly for possible EOR storage operations. DOE said the atlas provides more accurate data points compared to previous storage capacity studies due to better geologic resolutions. “This Atlas is a first attempt at providing a high-level overview of the potential for large-scale carbon storage in North America,” the atlas’ website says.

DOE Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Chuck McConnell lauded the atlas in a speech this week. “This is a great piece of work and we’ll all be using it. We hope it’s the beginning of a series of atlases that will continue to improve the resolution and the understanding of these geological regions, getting them down to the granular level to be able to take advantage of investments, and frankly continue to focus the effort on utilization in terms of enhanced oil recovery and the regions where it might be applied,” he said. The three energy ministries involved said the atlas will be periodically updated to reflect new information as it is acquired.