On Thursday 14th December, Eleanor Oldham attended the GESGB’s CCS4G Symposium on behalf of Merlin. This event is only in its second year but has already grown significantly. It is highly recommend for anyone actively engaged in CCS, and there were around 100 people in attendance (plus more at the co-located Geophysics Seminar). The presentations varied widely from high-level perspectives on the role CCS can play in decarbonisation, to operator experiences from active CCS projects (and portfolios). There was also a sprinkling of presentations on technical workflows which could be employed to appraise potential CCS sites, and Eleanor’s presentation fell into this latter category.

Eleanor's presentation discussed how stochastic methods can be used to assess mechanical top-seal risk of a potential CCS site.  This methodology can be used to bring some statistical rigour to the screening stage, but is also useful to quickly answer “what-if” questions of a more mature project.  Key results include whether the top-seal is capable of storing an economically viable quantity of CO2 and a distribution of fracture pressures which can be used to determine whether an economic injection rate can be safely achieved.  It also reveals which parameters exert the most influence on the results, allowing appraisal budgets to be efficiently allocated.

The slides from Eleanor’s presentation are available for download here.

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