An Assessment of Monitoring Technologies Deployed in Multiple Carbonate Reef Reservoirs at the MRCSP Large-Scale CO2-EOR Site Michigan

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The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) is one of seven regional partnerships established in October 2003 as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) program to assess the technical and economic viability and public acceptability of carbon sequestration in the U.S. The MRCSP Phase III project injected over 1 million metric tons (MT) of CO2 into a group of Silurian (Niagaran)-age pinnacle reef reservoirs in Otsego County, Michigan (USA) that are operated by Core Energy, LLC [1]. There are over 800 pinnacle reefs in northern Michigan, and collectively, these geologic features have enough capacity to store several hundred million MT of CO2. Moreover, most of the reefs are depleted oil- or gas-reservoirs having previously undergone primary production in the 1970s and 1980s; therefore, they offer the opportunity to achieve CO2 storage through enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) (associated storage) and via geologic sequestration (injection alone without production). A key objective of the MRCSP Phase III project was to evaluate the effectiveness of various monitoring technologies for use in associated storage or sequestration projects in the Niagaran pinnacle reefs. Over the period 2013 to 2020, the MRCSP Phase III project conducted monitoring using eleven different technologies for their effectiveness for CO2 plume delineation, assessing geochemical interactions, well integrity, leak detection, induced seismicity, land deformation, and mass balance accounting in the group of study reefs operated by Core Energy. This paper discusses the effectiveness of selected monitoring technologies that had the goal of detecting/delineating the extent of CO2 in the subsurface. The results are relevant to others planning or currently conducting CO2 sequestration or associated storage projects in similar carbonate reef reservoirs.