The CSIRO In-Situ Laboratory in South Western Australia: a field laboratory for de-risking carbon storage

Abstract

The oil and gas industry in Western Australia will need to address their carbon emissions in response to the state government’s aspiration of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The geological storage of carbon dioxide is a proven technology and an option for reducing emissions. Storage operations would need to provide adequate monitoring systems in compliance with yet to be defined regulations and to assure the public that potential leakage could be confidently detected, managed and remediated. The In-Situ Laboratory in the south-west of Western Australia was established as a research field site to support low emissions technology development and provides a unique field site for controlled CO2 release experiments in a fault zone and testing of monitoring technologies between 400 m depth and the ground surface. A first test injection of 38 tonnes of food-grade gaseous CO2 in 2019 demonstrated the ability to detect less than 10 tonnes of CO2 with fibre optic sensing and borehole seismic testing. Results from the previous test and future experiments will help to improve the sensitivity of monitoring technologies and could contribute to defining adequate monitoring requirements for carbon storage regulations.