Integrating Enhanced Oil Recovery and Carbon Capture and Storage: Farnsworth Field

Abstract

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 180408, “Integrating Enhanced-Oil-Recovery and Carbon-Capture-and-Storage Projects: A Case Study From Farnsworth Field, Texas,” by Robert Balch, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and Brian McPherson, University of Utah, prepared for the 2016 SPE Western Regional Meeting, Anchorage, 23–26 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. The Southwest Partnership on Carbon Sequestration (SWP) is one of seven large-scale demonstration projects sponsored by the US Department of Energy. The SWP has a goal of permanently sequestering more than 1 million t of carbon dioxide (CO2) in an active enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) project in a mature waterflood in the Anadarko Basin. Goals of the project include optimizing the balance between EOR and storage, ensuring storage permanence, and developing best practices for carbon storage using man-made CO2. Introduction The goal of the project is to inject at least 1 million t of CO2 into an active oil field undergoing EOR over a 4- to 5-year period. All CO2 used in the project is anthropogenic and would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere. Much of this injected CO2 will be trapped permanently in the subsurface. A primary objective is to quantify CO2 storage and better understand conditions and characteristics that promote such storage. Background. The project site is located in the Anadarko Basin, a deep structural basin approximately 70,000 sq miles in size and primarily located in the northern Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma and extending into eastern Colorado and western Kansas. The basin is a mature oil-and-gas-production province but without access to natural CO2 sources. These factors combine to make the Anadarko an excellent region for combined EOR and carbon-storage projects using anthropogenic CO2. The target formation for the CO2-storage study addressed by this paper is the oil-bearing upper Morrow sandstone, informally designated the Morrow B. The Morrow Formation at Farns worth is an incised valley filled with coarse sandstone that has produced more than 19 million bbl of oil and 44 Bcf of gas. The formation lies at an average depth of 7,750 ft and contains rock with permeability ranging from 10 to 500 md, placing it well within the range needed for CO2 injection and storage. Preliminary estimates of CO2-storage capacity of the Morrow within the Farnsworth Unit (FWU) exceed 25 million t. To date, all CO2 has been delivered from two anthropogenic sources. Much of this injected CO2 is being trapped permanently in the subsurface in the Morrow B formation. The site operator is injecting CO2 in the center well of five-spot well patterns. The project started with three initial patterns in December 2010, and more patterns are to be added as CO2 is purchased and more recycled CO2 becomes available. As of May 2015, there were 13 operating patterns. The plan is to have approximately 25 patterns in operation.