Overview of Future USGS Gulf of Mexico Buoyant Storage Assessment Project

Abstract

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is a member of a U.S. Department of Energy-funded partnership headed by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology that is working to assess the feasibility of offshore geologic carbon dioxide (CO2) storage in the Gulf of Mexico. The role of the USGS is to assess the buoyant geologic CO2 storage resource of the western half of the offshore Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Buoyant CO2 storage is the CO2 held in place by a top and lateral seal (either a sealing formation or a sealing fault), that creates a column of CO2 in communication across pore space in a geologic reservoir. This assessment will be similar to the USGS assessment of onshore buoyant geologic CO2 storage [1] and will employ a modified version of existing USGS methodology [2] to assess the buoyant CO2 storage capacity in the GoM.